


Reunion

by peacensafety



Series: Memphis [1]
Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: Lakota Mythology, Magic, Memphis, Multi, Pretty much everyone in KPOP ever makes some sort of an appearance, Random Celebrity Appearances, Southern Gothic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 04:44:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacensafety/pseuds/peacensafety
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seunghyun comes home to Memphis after spending years in Atlanta. Will Jiyong remember him, or is their relationship firmly in the past?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is the same story from AFF and LJ. I've had a lot of people ask me for .pdfs of the stories, so I'm just going to put them here so that folks can download them. This is really freakin' long, and I don't know if it's the best thing I've ever done but it holds a special place in my heart.

Seunghyun gripped the leather of the steering wheel tightly, feeling small flecks flaking off into the damp palm of his hand. He pumped the clutch with his left foot and downshifted to bring the car to a stop at yet another freaking red light. It was a toss-up on what was going to drive him more insane at this point: all three billion red lights that he was going to hit on the way back to the Kwon mansion, or the sounds from the back seat of the car that were hardening his cock to the point of pain inside his black uniform pants. 

The motions of driving were not helping his erection, the compression of his balls and his reaction to the moans and wet sucking sounds coming from behind him an audio aphrodisiac along with the required dance he was performing in the front seat in order to drive. He desperately wished that he had been given leave to listen to music, anything to drown out what was happening in the back. He turned the air conditioning up in the car and aimed one of the fans at his crotch in a desperate attempt to cool his ardor. 

His family had been working for the Kwons since time in memorial. Seunghyun remembered toddling after his mother in the gardens, being pointed out the new Kwon heir waving his arms from a little basket next to Mrs. Kwon, who was taking tea in the rose garden with her friends. He remembered watching the birthday parties and the social events from the side, pausing in his maintenance of the cars or the tractors, oil clogging up the pores on his face. 

Jiyong, the heir was named. Jiyong, also known as the Bane of Seunghyun’s Very Existence, the Child Who Could Do No Wrong, the Reason for His Exile. It had been the summer of his seventeenth year that had gotten Seunghyun sent away. Fifteen year old Jiyong had started following him around after the school year had ended, more than usual, and had started asking him questions about the music he listened to, the cars he worked on, the paintings he did up in his room in the Choi apartment above the garage, the pictures that he took, the girls that he fucked. The boy had been an endless pit of insatiable curiosity, and Mr. and Mrs. Kwon disapproved their interactions claiming that Seunghyun was a bad influence on their precious son.

And so Seunghyun had been sent to the Atlanta to attend art school, a favor that Mrs. Kwon had called in from one of her friends. Of course, a few things had happened first, but Seunghyun knew the Kwons did not want him around their child. He was forbidden to come home, and when his mother died he had to miss her funeral because his father had been too drunk to argue the punishment and the Kwons were too busy hiring another gardener. Of course, they had to hire two, to replace the knowledge and expertise Seunghyun’s mother had. They had gotten two from the old country, Seunghyun thought bitterly, as if that would make up for the betrayal of his mother’s memory.

Seunghyun forced himself to concentrate on things other than his bitterness. It was very difficult, something that didn’t surprise him, especially since Seunghyun hadn’t seen Jiyong since his return from Georgia, hadn’t even said hi to the annoying boy. He had been sitting with his father in his old room when Mrs. Kwon had called and asked his father to pick Jiyong up at a party he was attending; Jiyong had gotten too drunk to drive himself and his date home. 

When Seunghyun had pulled up in front of the Peabody Hotel, Jiyong had stumbled into the back seat of the Kwon family’s black Mercedes without even checking to see who was driving, dragging some other equally drunk female behind him. They had proceeded to attack each other as soon as Seunghyun pulled out from in front of the hotel. The wet noises they were making in the back seat had him worried about a zombie attack for all of five seconds, and then he adjusted the rear-view mirror and realized that the only real danger Jiyong was in was if the girl was trying to get pregnant… and the way her mouth hadn’t left the zipper portion of Jiyong’s pants for the past twenty minutes left Seunghyun pretty assured that they wouldn’t have to worry about mini-Jiyongs running around quite yet.

Seunghyun felt sweat pricking the back of his neck when he saw the girl’s mouth sliding up Jiyong’s cock, revealing a wet, slick wand that was thicker and longer than Seunghyun had remembered. He watched Jiyong wrap his hand in the girl’s hair, gently pulling her head back down to engulf him once more, and Seunghyun quickly readjusted the rearview so that he could see out of the back window. He blinked once when Jiyong met his eyes in the mirror, a cocky, lazy smile spreading across his face before he got off into the girl’s mouth, keeping eye contact with Seunghyun the entire time, letting Seunghyun stare at ecstasy on his face. Jiyong pulled the girl up into his lap and kissed her, staring at Seunghyun as he marauded her mouth, and then smirking at him while she rested her head on his broad shoulder. 

Seunghyun tore his eyes away from the mirror, downshifting again for yet another red light. He was angry at the drunken little prick in the back seat, and was sorely tempted to turn around and punch him when his loud little girlfriend started moaning again, and Seunghyun saw that she was riding Jiyong’s hand, buried under her short skirt. Her sighs were like fuel to Seunghyun’s temper, feeding the volcano that was already close to exploding. He didn’t even want to know what in hell they were doing now, and it was with some relief that he pulled up in front of the girl’s house and she had to get out, readjusting her assumedly wet panties under the short skirt she was wearing before walking up to the house. It wasn’t like Seunghyun didn’t know who she was.

Jiyong hopped the seat and buckled himself in next to Seunghyun. “Hyung!” he greeted the driver, who glared over at him. “I didn’t know you were home!” He completely ignored the fact that he had been in the backseat with Seunghyun’s ex-girlfriend, who hadn’t even recognized him she was so drunk off of alcohol and Jiyong.

“It’s only for a week, and then I’m leaving again. Dad was too drunk to come get you, so he sent me. Do you fuck your girlfriends in front of my dad like this?”

“Hell no. I knew you were driving the entire time. Did you miss me?” Jiyong batted his eyelashes at the older boy, who desperately wanted to punch his smug face.

“Like cancer,” Seunghyun retorted, instantly wishing that he were wittier. 

“What’s Atlanta like? Are the girls as hot as they are in Memphis? Are they all easy? How many of them did you fuck?” Jiyong looked at the impressive erection that Seunghyun desperately wished would go away, “Apparently you didn’t fuck enough of them. Do you want Dara’s number? She’d take care of that for you…”

“Jiyong, shut the hell up,” Seunghyun bit each word off like it were medicine. 

“I could take care of it for you,” Jiyong teased, reaching over the seat as if he were going to do just that.

Seunghyun let go of the stick shift long enough to slap the boy’s hand, and then he glared at him. “I’m trying to drive you safely home, quit being a fag.”

Jiyong laughed, “God I missed you. Don’t go away after a week. Stay with me forever, and you can be my driver like your dad was my dad’s driver…”

“I have a real job that will pay me real money, doing something that I love doing. Why the fuck would I spend my life driving you around?”

Jiyong pouted, his lower lip pillowing out in a gesture that tempted Seunghyun, who glued his eyes to the road. Jiyong was too sexual, spreading his pheromones everywhere. Seunghyun wasn’t immune, but he knew his boundaries, which seemed to make Jiyong want to tempt him even more, even when they were kids.

Seunghyun pulled up in front of the Kwon mansion, gravel crunching under the weight of the tires, and then got out of the car. He opened the passenger side door for Jiyong, and waited until the boy had exited the car before slamming it shut. 

Jiyong whirled around, placing his hands on either side of Seunghyun’s body, pinning him against the hood. “Stay with me. Don’t go work for that magazine, stay with me. I’ll pay you more, I’ll give you some rooms in the house, I’ll…”

“We can’t stay together, Ji.” Seunghyun said, his deep voice becoming gentle as he tenderly pushed the boy off of him. “There’s too much between us, and you need a wife.”

Jiyong reached up to touch Seunghyun’s face, cupping his cheek in his hand, his thumb finding the dimple that would appear in one of Seunghyun’s rare smiles. “I missed you so much, it was like a physical pain to be separated from you and now you say you’re leaving again? How can you do this to me? How can you do this to us?”

Seunghyun’s eyes narrowed as he pushed Jiyong away. “Good night, sir,” he said formally, donning the mask of servant to Jiyong’s master. He walked around the car, leaving Jiyong in front of the house, swaying to whatever imaginary music was running through his drunken head. Seunghyun got into the car and drove it back to the garage.

His actions from then on were habit, one that hadn’t died from the four years he spent in Georgia. He wiped the towncar down with the shammy, cleaned out the back seat, hung the keys on the rack near the stairs to his family’s apartment, checked the oil and recorded the information in a log, made a note to gas the car up in the morning, and then walked up the stairs. 

His dad was passed out on the couch. Seunghyun took the bottle of beer out of his hand and placed it on the coffee table. He pulled a blanket that had been resting on the back of the couch and shook it out over his dad, who talked a little in his sleep, arguing with someone about car maintenance or some crazy thing. 

Seunghyun then went to the apartment’s one bathroom and took a fast and cold shower, soaping his long black hair and washing his body with quick and efficient strokes and ignored the need to masturbate. 

He snuggled under the covers on his bed. He lay flat on his stomach with his head under the pillow, clutching another pillow to his chest. Laying this way was guaranteed to make him pass out, with his right knee raised only a slight bit to prevent the rest of his back from cramping up. 

The injury was what had started the avalanche of suck in Seunghyun’s life. Jiyong had taken him to one of the lakes in the far corner of their property, to show him a swing he had just made from tying a rope and an old metal headboard to a tree. They had taken turns jumping off of it, falling into the lake with some spectacular splashes, and then resting underneath the headboard’s shade in the hottest part of the day.

“Do you love Bom, Seunghyun?” Jiyong asked idly, taking a swig of the tea that they had brought with them.

“What?” Seunghyun asked, shielding his eyes from the noon sun, pleasantly basking in it. Both of the boys had taken off their shirts and shorts to dry on a low hanging branch, and their bodies warmed quickly underneath the heavy rays.

“I watched you fucking her last week in the garage, and I was wondering if you loved her,” Jiyong said, propping his head up in his hand so that he could look down at the older boy.

“You shouldn’t watch other people fucking, Jiyong,” Seunghyun admonished lazily, not really caring what the boy did. 

“I was jealous.”

“Do you want to fuck her or something?” Seunghyun asked, opening one of his beautiful eyes to study the boy’s face. 

“No, not like that,” Jiyong flung himself back down. “I was jealous of her.”

Seunghyun was quiet for a long minute, “You wanted to fuck me?”

“I love you, I don’t want to fuck you, I want us to make love. Is that even possible for two guys?”

“Jiyong,” Seunghyun thought he could explain, but couldn’t say anymore as the boy had flung himself on top of him. Seunghyun stared in wonder as his Jiyong’s lips lowered on top of his, those ridiculously girlish lips that had captured Seunghyun’s attention more than once, even if Seunghyun didn’t want to admit it. 

Seunghyun started to push him off, but Jiyong had whispered, “This is my first kiss, don’t ruin it,” and he found himself closing his eyes and kissing Jiyong back. Their mouths became the center of Seunghyun’s entire universe, the wet glide and the way that their lips and tongues fit together in so many different arrangements, the taste like summer rain, Jiyong’s breathy moans. Slowly, he became aware that their hips were pressing against each other; their naked desire rubbing in a way that Seunghyun knew was sending electrical signals up to his brain’s pleasure spot. Paying attention in biology somehow turned him on in this situation, a visual representation of what was happening inside of his body flashing in his mind’s eye. Seunghyun’s large hand traced lines down Jiyong’s back, his sweat damp skin smooth under the calluses of Seunghyun’s hand, Jiyong’s tiny ass fitting into the palm of his hand. The seconds of pleasure were burned into Seunghyun’s memory, to be pulled out and rewatched and analyzed. 

Jiyong whimpered in desperation, and Seunghyun opened his eyes to smile at the boy, but quickly panicked when he saw the top rail on the headboard above their heads lose its last mooring, the solder breaking at the edge. Seunghyun rolled with the boy under him and shielded him, feeling the sharp metal slice into his back. It didn’t hurt at first, and then the pain was all encompassing, a red and angry monster. Seunghyun gasped a scary, choking sound that alerted Jiyong to the danger.

Jiyong tried to scramble out from under the bigger boy, screaming when he saw the headboard and the blood, and then he screamed even louder when he realized that Seunghyun wasn’t moving. The boy had lost consciousness from the pain, and Jiyong was completely panicked. 

The screams had brought Jiyong’s mother and Seunghyun’s father, who had both been close by for whatever reason. Jiyong’s mother had almost had a heart attack from seeing her naked son, the heir to the Kwon legacy, underneath the chauffer’s naked son, and then she saw the blood and the headboard sticking out from Seunghyun’s back.

Seunghyun’s father quickly moved Jiyong out from under his son, not making a single comment to him. He shoved the naked boy at his panicked mother, and then pulled the headboard out of his son’s back. Seunghyun had regained consciousness a few times to scream in pain, but it was blessedly few times. 

Mrs. Kwon dressed her son first, and then she ran to bring help from Seunghyun’s mother and some of the assistant gardeners, one of whom called for an ambulance. 

In thanks, Mrs. Kwon let the Chois keep their job, even though their son had seduced her baby, and sent the Choi boy off to Georgia. They had thankfully waited until he graduated high school and had mostly healed from the laceration on his back, but he would never walk the same again. She never explained to her husband why she wanted Seunghyun gone from their family, and Mr. Kwon never asked, just paid the tuition and rent on the crappy cockroach infested apartment that Seunghyun lived in while he attended college.

That was then, Seunghyun thought to himself. He felt the desperate breeze blow in the window of his tiny bedroom, the air hot and sticky, and he closed his eyes in exhaustion and depression. In the last moments of consciousness Seunghyun thought he heard his mother’s voice singing to him, slowly stroking the muscles in his back, taking the echoes of pain away with her touch.


	2. Chapter 2

Searching Beale Street for Seunghyun wasn’t exactly something that Jiyong loved doing on a Friday night. The cops were everywhere, and he wasn’t quite twenty-one. Soon, they would start kicking underage people off the street entirely, and Jiyong needed to have Seunghyun home tonight.

It wasn’t a need so much as it was a want, he reminded himself. If Seunghyun insisted on only being home for a week before he left again, then it was a simple want that dictated he find the older boy and drag him home, to hoard Seunghyun’s time tightly to his chest like a dragon would gold.

Jiyong stopped at a slushy vendor and grabbed some raspberry ice, trying to eat it quickly before it melted in the ninety-five degree heat. It was only June and it was another sign that this summer was going to be Hell. He sidestepped a small child doing back flips down the center of the street. There were other small children in white tank tops and worn blue jeans doing the same thing, supervised by adult men who were flipping over each other at great heights over the stone pavement, and Jiyong slipped a couple of dollars into the yellow bucket the smallest of them was carrying around. 

“TOP’s in front of The Daisy with the old crew,” one of the dark skinned boys whispered at Jiyong, winking and then throwing a standing back tuck, and then about five back-hand springs away from Jiyong. Tourists threw money at the kid's bucket as they clapped and sighed over his athletic ability.

Jiyong sighed, remembering that TOP was what Seunghyun’s classmates used to call him because he was top of their class. It used to drive Jiyong nuts, how the older boy could hang out and paint all day, drink and party with everyone all night, and still be first in his class. Jiyong only ever paid attention in music and history classes, and English if the poetry was good. 

Jiyong heard Seunghyun beat boxing in front of the theatre long before he got close enough to see his face. Other people were rapping, and a few people were dancing, but the scene was quite the cozy little oasis of interracial cooperation on the largely segregated street. A blues band was set up across the street on another corner, the guitar case open as a man sang about running out of some woman’s house as her husband got home, the accompanying drum line played on an upside down plastic bucket with a pair of worn drumsticks. Jiyong vaguely caught the strains of a gospel choir from a club down the street, but he caught Seunghyun’s eyes before he could figure that mess out.

The man’s eyes were startling and intense, and every time Jiyong looked straight into them he felt his breath catch. He tried not to react because he knew that Seunghyun was self-conscious about them; people were always worried that he was angry at them because they weren’t used to meeting a gaze that direct. Jiyong smiled, and tried not to get too much sadistic pleasure out of the look of annoyance that crossed the older man’s features. 

A few in the crowd recognized Jiyong, and they fist bumped and high fived his presence, and Jiyong jumped in with a rap that he freestyled standing in front of them, praising one of the boy’s girlfriends and then insulting the same boy, bragging about himself and then handing the rhyme off to the man standing next to him. One of the girls broke into the rhythm with a throaty gospel voice, she threw in a rough blues line and then went back to an old refrain from church, “Come now, angel band. Come and around me stand. Take me away on your snow white wings, to my immortal home.”

The song ended some ten minutes later, with tourists clapping and whistling and then moving on to the next group of musicians in between slipping in and out of the bars along Beale Street. Elvis impersonators walked around with guitars and would pose for pictures, some of Johnny Cash’s old bandmates stumbled out of a bar, and police stood all up and down the street. 

“That’s new,” Seunghyun commented, sipping at a red slushy drink stinking of alcohol and staring at the officers.

“New mayor, trying to clean up the town,” Jiyong agreed. “Come home tonight, hyung. Come home with me.”

“Not going to happen, Ji. Your mom would flip out if she found me there, and my dad doesn’t need the hassle.”

“She’s out, Seunghyun. She and dad went up to Nashville for a two day conference. They won’t be back. Come home with me tonight.”

Seunghyun stared at his old friend for a few moments. “You just don’t want to be alone in the house.”

Jiyong glared at Seunghyun, who sighed and then said good-bye to his friends. Seunghyun was kind enough to not make Jiyong beg in front of his friends.

“Where did you park?” Seunghyun asked. “I came with someone else and I’m drunker than hell. This is my third Call-A-Cab.”

Jiyong winced at the thought of his friend drinking the alcoholic slushies. He giggled a little at how bright red his friend’s mouth and tongue were stained, and then sipped on his own non-drunkeness inducing red ice. “In front of the guitar factory. Only a block south…” 

Seunghyun glared at Jiyong some. “Let’s start walking.”

The boys walked along the street in companionable silence, waving to friends from high school and from Jiyong’s stint at The University of Memphis where he had just completed his first year in pre-law.

“Where is the photography job that you took?” Jiyong asked.

“New Orleans,” Seunghyun answered.

“You know I’m going there in two more years for Tulane, to do law school,” Jiyong smiled up at him.

“Thought you would be going to Vanderbilt like your old man,” Seunghyun answered vaguely.

“No you didn’t. You knew I would be going to Tulane like my mom. You took the job there on purpose,” Jiyong smiled in triumph. He threw his Icee container away in a trashcan on their way to the car.

“You have such a huge ego,” Seunghyun said, not answering the question. 

The light from the yellow Gibson Guitar Factory sign stained his skin a molten gold, and Jiyong fought the temptation to lick Seunghyun’s face to see if it tasted like the honey it so resembled. He clicked the button on his key ring to open the car doors, and poured the chauffer’s son into the passenger seat of his Dodge Charger. It wasn’t the only car that he owned, but it was his favorite eight cylinder vehicle.

Jiyong took 2nd Street all the way north outside of Memphis’s downtown sprawl, and settled into the curving road that would take him to 51 to lead him out of Frayser and into Shelby Forest, where his parents’ mansion was. 

“You still think that you see ghosts?” Seunghyun asked when they were in the middle of Frayser, a place that Jiyong always became thankful that his windows were tinted black. It wasn’t the safest area of town. 

Jiyong didn’t answer, and cracked his window to light a cigarette. 

“That’s why you don’t want to be home alone tonight…” 

“I can call Dara, see if she wants to spend the night with me if you’re going to pussy out on me,” Jiyong said.

“This is like that time you made me come with you to see the werewolves who worked on the docks,” Seunghyun said, smiling fondly at the boy.

“Shut the hell up, Seunghyun! That was six years ago,” Jiyong shifted from second to third, passing a few cars.

“Man, that night sucked. The Mississippi stinks, and we were mucking about in that mud. You wanted to stay all night ‘cause it was a full moon…”

“You shouldn’t have taken me. I was fourteen…”

“You dumbass. Even when you were fourteen I wanted you. I’ve wanted you since I can remember,” Seunghyun said, sipping from his Call-A-Cab. “I was sixteen then, but I would have done anything you asked me to do.”

Jiyong stared at the road in silence at that confession. “Seunghyun… I…”

“Shut the hell up,” Seunghyun said, placing his large hand over his eyes. “I’m getting a headache.”

Jiyong stopped at the last gas station in Frayser to pick up a bottle of water for his friend before he turned onto the road that would lead to his parent’s house. Standing out in the hot after drinking the high volumes of alcohol was bound to cause dehydration, and if it wasn’t watched it could cause hyperthermia. He dwelled on Seunghyun’s confession for a few seconds before he got back into the car, smiling to himself before he opened the door and threw the bottle at his drunken friend. “Drink that, you piece of shit. Your head is gonna fall off with all that alcohol.” 

Seunghyun kept eye contact with Jiyong as he rebelliously took another deep pull from the slushy, but he followed it up by loudly breaking the seal on the water bottle and taking a healthy swig of water so Jiyong didn’t say anything as he started the car. He left the car in park and reached over and to grab his friend’s neck, and pulled the red stained lips closer to his own, barely prepared for the icy glide of Seunghyun’s tongue licking his own lips, Seunghyun’s hand cold from holding the iced drink reaching up to wrap around the back of Jiyong’s neck as he feasted on his mouth. The older man’s slight stubble rasped Jiyong’s lips, and it turned Jiyong on more than he was prepared for.

Jiyong moaned into Seunghyun’s mouth, slippery-sliding his explorations, losing all sense of reality. He quickly shoved his hand up Seunghyun’s shirt, shocked at the feel of abdominal muscles that now lay on the man’s stomach where before had only been the same boyish physique that Jiyong was only just getting rid of. 

Seunghyun reached up with his other hand to touch Jiyong’s face, inadvertently spilling the slushee a little, forcing him to pull back. He stared at the boy’s lips, almost in disbelief or fascination before he pulled off his top shirt to soak up the spill from Jiyong’s tan leather seats. “Sorry,” he apologized, but Jiyong wasn’t sure if it was for the slushee spill on the seats or the kiss.

They drove back to the Kwon mansion in silence, Seunghyun in a thin white tee-shirt that was tight and distracting, holding the wet and cold top shirt over his blue-jeaned crotch in a worthless attempt to calm himself down. Jiyong saw that Seunghyun was staring out the window, the scenery boring as it was dark and there were very few street lights out this way.

After they got home, Seunghyun and Jiyong raided the kitchen for pretzels, vanilla pudding, Oreos, salsa, peanuts, ice-cold Coca-Cola and more bottles of water to take up to Jiyong’s bedroom with them. It was something they used to do every weekend and almost every night all summer until Seunghyun had been sent away. The comfort to be found in repetitive actions scared Jiyong almost, but it was better than sleeping in his room by himself.

Jiyong dropped seven salted peanuts in his coke before taking a huge gulp. He turned a movie on the big screen TV in his room before promptly ignoring it and turning to Seunghyun. “Let’s talk about what you said earlier tonight in the car.”

“I’m too sober for that now,” Seunghyun slurred, dipping one of his Oreos in the fiery salsa before taking a huge bite. “That moment is gone. We have a movie to watch.”

“I call bullshit on that,” Jiyong said. He glanced to the side of the bed that they were sprawled on, and Seunghyun followed his gaze after Jiyong’s face turned alarmingly pale. 

“You do still see ghosts,” Seunghyun said, staring at the blank space near his foot.

Jiyong quietly dipped a pretzel in the vanilla pudding and chomped on it, drinking his salty Coke and staring at the TV screen.

“Why don’t you change rooms?” Seunghyun asked, moving his foot away from the end of the bed. “This house has like, sixteen bedrooms.”

“She screams and slams doors in the other rooms in this house. In this room, she just sits on the floor at the edge of my bed and stares at me,” Jiyong said, his voice wavering slightly as he carefully refused to look over on Seunghyun’s side of the bed.

“What does she look like?” Seunghyun asked.

“She used to look like my grandmother, or the pictures I saw of my grandmother when she was younger. Now she looks like your mom,” Jiyong said.

Seunghyun stared at the empty spot, “My mom?”

Jiyong sighed, and then scooted closer to Seunghyun. “She’s crawling around the end of the bed so she can stare at me more closely,” he explained, and Seunghyun believed him because Jiyong’s entire scent changed to a slightly metallic odor, his skin got even paler, and he started sweating.

“Hey man, you want to sleep in my room tonight?” Seunghyun offered, holding his left arm out so that the other man could curl up into his side. Jiyong accepted the invitation with a shaky smile, and Seunghyun worried when he felt the other man’s body trembling. 

“No, I’ve tried that, too. She just follows me whenever I stay on the property. I’m hoping that next year I can get an apartment to stay in…”

“But you’re going to inherit this house,” Seunghyun frowned. “You need to call a priest.”

Jiyong stared at his side of the bed, seeing the woman’s dark eyes staring back at him. It was the only part of her he ever saw, unless she was crawling, as she kneeled next to his bed and stared at him, unblinking, for hours night after night. 

Jiyong was honestly scared of her, but it was a futile, hopeless fear. Nothing he could do would make her leave, but he felt safer in Seunghyun’s arms. He closed up the packages of junk food and set them on the bedside table (on Seunghyun’s side of the bed, as he couldn’t bring himself to go near the ghost) and settled back into the older man’s arms. 

The movie was a welcome distraction from the ghost woman, and Seunghyun’s body was comforting. Jiyong felt his eyes closing as he relaxed, and his left hand reached up to stroke the man’s neck for almost a half hour. As he drifted further into sleep, his hand trailed down Seunghyun’s chest and rested at his right pectoral muscle, his fingers tweaking the tiny nipple he found there almost on instinct.

He was stirred out of his semi-conscious state when a half asleep Seunghyun moaned, his deep voice rumbling against the ear Jiyong had pressed against his chest. The sound went straight to his dick, and Jiyong took the opportunity to push his quickly hardening member into the hollow of Seunghyun’s left hip. 

“I want you to talk about what you were saying in the car,” Jiyong pressed again, licking the curve below Seunghyun’s jaw line up to the lobe of his ear, sliding his lips up and down the bit of flesh like Dara had sucked his own cock the night before. He knew Seunghyun was remembering the act, too, when his right hand buried itself in Jiyong’s hair, and his left leg pushed between Jiyong’s thighs, which parted with almost no prompting at all.

“How many men have you been with, my sweet whore?” Seunghyun asked in his deep whiskey chocolate voice before capturing Jiyong’s lips with his own. 

Jiyong gasped, raising his arms to help Seunghyun pull his shirt off. “I’ve only ever wanted to be with you, Seunghyun. I’ve fucked a million women, but no men. Ever. I’ve only ever wanted you.”

Seunghyun smiled, biting the lower lip that pouted on its own accord. He paused as if coming to a decision, and then pulled that lip into his mouth again, running his tongue along it before softly sucking on it, letting it slide out of his mouth with a wet popping sound.

He kissed Jiyong’s jaw, holding the man’s head back as he bit and licked his way down his neck, to his collar bones, feasting on the smooth, pale, hairless skin he found, lightly biting nipples and beauty marks. He left small red butterfly footprints down his lover’s body, and spent almost five minutes of mind torturing time treating Jiyong’s hip bones like small hills of rock candy. Seunghyun jerked his pants off, and Jiyong was disconcerted about being naked while Seunghyun was still fully clothed.

Seunghyun licked Jiyong’s balls with the flat of his tongue, pressing between the two mounds in the fleshy sack, following the line of his dick up to the spongy mushroom tip tasting salt and musk. He lapped up the drop of pre-cum that sat in the still pond of his slit while he wrapped Jiyong’s right leg around his neck. Seunghyun sucked on Jiyong’s tip, and then blew on the moisture he left behind. 

“Please, oh God, please,” Jiyong begged the older man, burying his hands in Seunghyun’s hair and then pulling on his own. He moaned and his body twitched under the other man’s ministrations.

Seunghyun held his dick firmly in his right hand and engulfed the wand in his mouth. He slid it over his tongue and down his throat, lightly sucking as if he was eating a lollipop, over and over as Jiyong whimpered. Seunghyun palmed the man’s balls in his left hand, lightly massaging them and then when Jiyong’s dick was wet enough from Seunghyun’s saliva, he moved his right hand up and down Jiyong’s shaft in tandem with his mouth.

It only took three more slow strokes before Jiyong’s balls drew up and Seunghyun deep throated him as Jiyong shot cum down his lover’s throat in waves of ecstasy. Jiyong panicked briefly, wondering if it would end, and then he fell straight into a deep and restful sleep, only vaguely aware of the woman smiling at the edge of his bed in triumph while Seunghyun pulled him into his arms. It was the first time in a long time that he felt protected enough to surrender full consciousness, and he slept without dreaming.


	3. Chapter 3

The cicadas sang a loud mating song when Jiyong walked out to the garage early Saturday afternoon. He had just woken up to an empty bed, Seunghyun’s side cold but still smelling of him. He felt bad for not reciprocating the night before, but he hadn’t gotten off that hard since he could remember. He immediately got out of bed to look for Seunghyun, to at least thank him for the night before.

He found Seunghyun in the garage with his high school best friend, DaeSung. Jiyong felt instantly jealous as the two were laughing while Seunghyun leaned over a car, filling some engine part with some kind of pink liquid. “So this professor was talking with this extra thick Southern accent so that he could scare off the Yankees the first couple weeks of class…” Daesung was telling Seunghyun, who was laughing at this lame story like he had never heard anything funnier in his entire life.

“Daesung,” Jiyong said like his name as if challenge him. Daesung smiled at the younger boy who had been like his best friend’s younger brother as they were growing up. 

“Jiyong, how’ve you been, man?” Daesung moved to shake his hand and pull him into a hug, pounding him on the back a few times.

Seunghyun looked up from his car, a brilliant and goofy smile spreading across his features. He put the plastic bottle of whatever liquid he was holding aside, and stood up straight. “Jiyong, good morning.”

Jiyong felt slightly embarrassed that he had slept in so late, and he ran a hand through his hair while biting his lower lip. He stared at Seunghyun in his ripped up jeans and dirty white tee-shirt, his feet in what had to be hot workboots, and wished he could walk up and wipe the smudge of oil off the side of his nose. Instead, he nodded in greeting at the older boys, and prepared to turn around and just walk out of the garage.

“What’s the matter, Jiyong?” Seunghyun asked, concern wrinkling the skin between his eyes.

“Nothing,” Jiyong lied.

“You actin’ like a girl now?” Seunghyun laughed, reading the situation quickly. “Daesung, Jiyong and I are trying to figure our way around a relationship. I think he’s bein’ jealous.”

“Whatever dude. I don’t care what games y’all are playin’ in each others pants just so long you keep it out of mine,” Daesung said, taking a bite out of an apple. “Anyway, back to this teacher…”

Jiyong’s smile could have lit up all of Memphis when Seunghyun gave him a quick, slightly stinky side hug before he went back to work on the car in front of him. Daesung’s story didn’t seem too terribly bad all of a sudden, and Jiyong found himself laughing along with Seunghyun.

Daesung had to leave to finish running some errands for his old man and quickly hugged Seunghyun. “I’ll look for a job in New Orleans, maybe we can room together?” he asked him.

“That’d be great man, maybe you could go to NOLA or Tulane to finish out your Master’s?” Seunghyun suggested.

Daesung shrugged, and they said their good-byes as Seunghyun was finishing up the car he was working on. 

Seunghyun’s attention was now on the little territorial dragon that stood next to him, and he tenderly kissed the man and squeezed his shoulders. “Let me go upstairs so I can get cleaned up. Have you eaten yet?”

Jiyong shook his head in the negative, following Seunghyun up the old staircase to the Choi apartment. Seunghyun never took a long time getting clean, and Jiyong ate the food that Seunghyun had left over from breakfast that morning while he waited for him to get out of the bathroom.

He came out of the shower barefoot in worn but clean blue jeans, a towel wrapped around his naked shoulders. Seunghyun smiled at the frozen posture of his new boyfriend, and he dropped a kiss on the other man’s head before grabbing his camera from the kitchen table.

“This is my old Nikon D40,” Seunghyun said, turning it on and adjusting some of the settings. “I want you to take off your shirt and go sit by the window over there. I want to get your back.”

Jiyong obeyed without question. It was something that they had done since he was ten years old, Jiyong playing model to Seunghyun’s camera. Sometimes, he hated the blank look Seunghyun got in his eye as he snapped photos, almost like he wasn’t seeing Jiyong at all, as if he were alone in the room with a ghost who couldn’t see him. 

It didn’t take long for Seunghyun to fall into that creepy hyper-concentration mode that he operated in. Jiyong stared out the window while he heard the camera clicking away behind him, thankful that Seunghyun had turned off the flash for this photoshoot. 

He got lost in thought, staring at the old Magnolia tree out the window. Some of the flowers were bruised, and falling in the June heat. Birds splashed in the bath below, cooling off from the hot sun, and occasionally a squirrel spun on the trashcan lid covering the bird feeder. He lived in such a pretty place, and he wanted Seunghyun to live there with him forever, even though he wanted to go work in Louisiana. He wondered if his pictures would be on Seunghyun’s walls in his new home, he wondered if he would be referred to as his boyfriend or as some guy he used to date. He didn’t feel comfortable asking Seunghyun just yet what they were going to define each other as.

Jiyong hated sitting still while Seunghyun took his picture. It wasn’t like he hadn’t expected this at some point, but there were other things that he would rather be doing in their limited time together, things that involved him molesting the older man.

“I’m bored, hyung. Can we go take a picnic at our swimming hole?” Jiyong whined.

Seunghyun smiled at the impatient man, who had never sat still for very long. While he was throwing on more clothing, Jiyong gathered up picnic supplies, and they walked the two acres out back to the lake behind the house. 

Dragonflies and damsel flies competed with each other over their lake, ducklings followed after their mother and here and there a turtle basked on driftwood floating in the brownish gray water. Jiyong and Seunghyun carefully studied the ground around them before laying out the blanket, making sure that they weren’t going to piss off any ill tempered water moccasin. 

“Was I really your first kiss?” Seunghyun asked, leaning back on the blanket while munching on some cheese and grapes.

Jiyong blushed. “How can you remember that?”

Seunghyun smiled at him. “I remember everything that happened between us. Was I really your first kiss?” he repeated the question.

“Yes.” 

“You were good, even then. It was like you were leading me,” Seunghyun said, stuffing a couple more bites of food in his mouth. He fed Jiyong some of the nicer pieces of food with his fingers brushing against the younger man’s full lips, and then took a drink of water and laid back on the blanket. He closed his eyes for a minute, and smiled when he felt Jiyong straddling him. “We don’t have a rusted headboard above us, right?” he asked a few seconds before his mouth was occupied with Jiyong’s tongue. 

The kiss was soft, not quite the erotic playground that was their early kisses. This kiss brought tears to Seunghyun’s eyes for some reason, and he gently held Jiyong’s face in his hands while he kissed the younger man’s lips. This was Jiyong kissing with his heart on his tongue. 

Seunghyun felt Jiyong pushing past his shirt, and he slipped it over his head to give the younger man more access. He had worked on his body in Georgia, and was pleased with the stream-lined strength that he had carved. The way that Jiyong’s irises enlarged and his nostrils flared at the sight of Seunghyun bared before him made him think that Jiyong liked his body, too. 

Jiyong sucked a mark right above Seunghyun’s heart, leaning back as if he were pleased with his handiwork. “That means you’re mine, okay?” 

Seunghyun smiled tenderly at him. “For as long as you want me,” he agreed, running a hand through the other man’s hair. He pulled Jiyong’s shirt off, and then pulled him back down on top of him for a kiss. He loved the way that Jiyong’s skin felt against his own, and lifted his hips slightly to grind against the other man.

Jiyong felt himself having problems breathing, and he smiled down at the man he laid sprawled against. He looked up, though, frowning at the interruption.

“Do you hear it, hyung?” Jiyong asked.

“Hear what?” Seunghyun had to blink a few times to switch concentrations, but he caught up with Jiyong quickly, listening for whatever it was he was hearing.

“Do you hear that woman singing?” Jiyong sat up, displaying his body for the older man to stare at, and Seunghyun had to distract himself from the sight or he was going to assault the man. 

Seunghyun buried his hands in his hair, tugging a little so that the pain would make him concentrate on something else. “No, but I think I heard her a few nights ago. She sounds like my mother?”

Jiyong nodded. “Why do you think that your mom is haunting my house? Why do you think she took place of my grandmother?”

Seunghyun sighed, “I don’t know. Dad wouldn’t even tell me how mom really died, just that she tripped at the top of the stairs.”

“Your mom was so graceful, it seems like such a strange way for her to die,” Jiyong mused out loud. It was something that everyone always remarked on, how silently she walked across the floor, how she moved like the wind. 

“Where’s the sound coming from?” Seunghyun asked sitting up and gesturing for Jiyong to put his shirt back on as he threw his back on. 

“I think from the main house,” Jiyong answered, looking across the yard at the back of his parents’ house, through Seunghyun's mother's gardens, standing up and pulling his shirt down over his body.

“You want to go investigate?” Seunghyun asked, trying not to wish that the man hadn’t gotten distracted. He cursed the ghost.

Jiyong looked unsure of himself. “I hate seeing her, hyung. She creeps me out.”

“You want to call a priest? I know one, graduated with him from high school…”

“Have you seen The Exorcist? I don’t want to puke green pea soup…” Jiyong said.

“You’re not possessed, dumbass. You’re haunted. There’s a difference,” Seunghyun rolled his eyes, but touched Jiyong’s now clad shoulder with affection. “Let’s go look for your ghost. It’ll be easier in daylight.”

The Kwon mansion was old, older than the Kwon’s arrival to America. Dust floated in the rays of sunlight pouring in from stained glass windows in the stairway, boards creaked in protest as feet trampled over them. Strange smells sometimes emanated from corners and rugs, books collected dust on sagging shelves. The boys went through all the rooms on the second and third floors before heading to the kitchen for a late lunch. They hadn’t found anything, but they had managed to make out in every single room in the upper stories of the house. Their arrival in the kitchen had them giggling and flushed, but the mood was instantly killed when they saw Jiyong’s mother and father.

Mr. Kwon smiled to see them, looking over his newspaper at the boys. He uncrossed his legs and stood at the same height as Seunghyun, looking elegant, tall and thin and fashionable. 

Seunghyun always thought it was strange that he thought he looked more like this man more than his own father, and briefly wondered if it was because they were both Korean.

Mrs. Kwon was a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.

“Oh no,” she said, glaring at Seunghyun. “Oh, you can’t be here. We sent you away.”

“I graduated, Mrs. Kwon. I’m only here for a week…” Seunghyun defended himself in his deep voice, hoping that it would soothe her ruffled feathers.

“You got your BFA?” Mr. Kwon asked with a smile. He folded the newspaper. “I’ve been hoping to get some new business cards; do you think you could design something for me?”

“Bin, this boy is a bad influence on our son!” Mrs. Kwon protested to her husband. “I found them naked together!”

“Oh yeah, that whole gay thing you keep complaining about. Hey, do you think that Jiyong could get one of those gay scholarships if he and Seunghyun were to… you know… be all gay together?” Mr. Kwon looked contemplative.

“This is our son!” Mrs. Kwon screeched, “This is not a case to argue, we cannot have a gay son! It is unnatural!”

“Yes, dear.” Mr. Kwon sighed and then turned to Jiyong, “Son, don’t be gay. Now Seunghyun, about those business cards…”

“Get out of our house,” Mrs. Kwon spat at the taller boy.

“Not yet, Bora, I’m still talking business with the boy. Besides, does he look gay to you? He’s not wearing any of that glitter stuff, and he isn’t wearing any pink or rainbow colored stuff. Can you be absolutely sure he’s gay?” Mr. Kwon asked his wife.

Jiyong wanted to strangle his parents, who were so embarrassing. 

“What kind of cards were you thinking of, sir?” Seunghyun asked Mr. Kwon, whose attention was often easily diverted but never fully distracted away from a subject. The man was brilliant, although he acted stupid sometimes in front of his wife in order to ignore some of her more caustic personality traits.

 

“Something elegant, maybe in sepia, like an old business card with old typeset ink…” Mr. Kwon started to say, but everyone in the kitchen was distracted by the sound of a door slamming upstairs. Footsteps walked down where the hallway should have been, and stopped at the top of the stairs leading to the kitchen.

“Who else is here? Not that Seungri boy, I hope,” Mrs. Kwon spat at her son.

Jiyong’s face was pale as he stared at the top of the stairs, where no one stood. “Y’all heard her this time?” he asked in a tiny voice.

Seunghyun went to stand by his lover, his arm going around the smaller man’s tense shoulders. “That was her?”

“Who is she?” Mr. Kwon asked, going to stand next to his son and staring up at the empty stair case, confusion on his face.

“Look at them being gay, Bin!” Mrs. Kwon screeched. “Gay!”

Bin Kwon looked at his son and then smiled, “Yes, we can get that scholarship!”

Seunghyun dropped his arm off of Jiyong’s shoulders, slightly embarrassed. 

“No, Bin! The Gay! It’s wrong, don’t let him be gay!” Mrs. Kwon demanded. “Jiyong, you have to marry a nice girl to have nice babies with. You have to be normal so that you can have clients…”

“There’s always adoption,” Mr. Kwon said, “and at least we know that Seunghyun won’t be marrying our boy for any other reason than love. I think that we couldn’t ask for a better son-in-law…”

“I want a daughter-in-law, Bin!” Mrs. Kwon glared at Seunghyun. “He’s not even the type that Jiyong could show at a company party.”

“Our company shouldn’t have a problem with it, considering that we own it, Bora. It’s owned by Kwon, Kwon, Jackson and Brisentine. Neither of them will care that our son is gay. We probably wouldn’t be adding two more Kwons to the list like you wanted, anyway. Jiyong’s always liked artists,” Mr. Kwon said.

“Are you sure that it was her?” Seunghyun decided that he wasn’t going to address the nonsensical conversation Jiyong’s parents were having. 

“Like father, like son,” Mrs. Kwon spat again, continuing her conversation with Mr. Kwon.

“Who is up there, Jiyong?” Mr. Kwon stared up at the top of the stairs again, finally paying attention to what they boys were talking about and ignoring the comment by Mrs. Kwon.

“Seunghyun’s mom,” Jiyong said in a very small voice.

The silence that followed was uninterrupted for a long period of time.

“That is not funny, Jiyong,” Mr. Kwon said, his entire mood shifting. He seemed depressed all of a sudden. “Mrs. Choi is gone, and you joking like this will not…”

“Don’t mention that woman in my house again,” Mrs. Kwon interrupted her husband, her voice irritated and exasperated, and she left the kitchen.

Mr. Kwon went out the back kitchen door into the nearby rose garden, leaving the two boys alone in the kitchen together. 

“Your parents are weird,” Seunghyun breathed into the suddenly tense air.

“You’re telling me,” Jiyong agreed. “Maybe it is time to call that priest.”

Seunghyun looked into the eyes of his lover, a smile hovering around his lips. “Catholics have mass on Saturdays. How are we going to spend our time until tomorrow afternoon, when my priest friend can come out?”


	4. Chapter 4

A party was not exactly what Seunghyun had in mind when he had suggested keeping themselves occupied until the next day, but he went with it seeing as how it kept Jiyong happy.

He had to admit that he was surprised that Jiyong actually knew rednecks well enough to get invited to a redneck party. Seunghyun had mostly hung out with the hip hop kids at school, but apparently Jiyong knew and was friends with everyone. When they walked out past the barn he had been greeted familiarly by almost everyone at the party, and Jiyong introduced him to everyone there as his older brother. 

Most of the kids there were smoking weed and throwing things into the huge bonfire they had lit. Seunghyun had been offered joints and loose green in glass pipes more than once that night, but he had declined every time. He had driven Jiyong’s Charger out to this middle of nowhere party, and he was determined to drive Jiyong back home as soon as he said the word. He had seduction in mind, and he wasn’t going to be easily distracted by some weed.

He pulled up a chair around a cooler filled with jello shots, where a lot of people his age were gathered, discussing farming issues and, weirdly enough, Plato’s Republic. Seunghyun talked about the nature of reality with relative ease, and the discussion digressed into a conversation about Pollack, Warhol, Basquiat, and Alex Grey, who were some of his favorite artists. 

Seunghyun glanced up every once in a while to check on Jiyong, who was getting wasted and hanging all over some girls. It didn’t make him feel all that great, as two nights ago Jiyong had been getting his oil changed by the very same girl whose ear he was currently whispering sweet nothings. Seunghyun tried to concentrate on the conversation he was having, but his temper felt like it was boiling. He refused to let himself look up anymore at wherever Jiyong might have been, and by the time he finally gave into temptation it was too late: Jiyong had disappeared with Dara. And Seunghyun knew from personal experience that she worked quickly when she saw something that she wanted. 

Seunghyun got up to go find his wayward boyfriend, his feet crunching on the slightly dried muddy tire tracks on the ground. He walked around the farm searching the shadows for Jiyong. He tried not to let his temper flare up, but he remembered the kiss next to the pond and it hurt his heart to think that Jiyong was with some girl so soon after Seunghyun had offered himself to the younger man. 

“What are you thinking, Seunghyun?” he whispered to himself, “He’s not ready for that kind of commitment. You’re pushing too hard, asking too much from a nineteen year old kid.”

He thought back to when he realized that he wanted forever with Jiyong. He had been only fourteen. Jiyong had grown three inches that summer, and was forever walking into furniture and tripping over his feet. Seunghyun was the one who had fed him Tylenol and massaged his legs when they would cramp up with growing pains, and after looking up to see Jiyong’s face relaxing into sleep after a particularly nasty bout of pain Seunghyun realized he wanted to be the man who could take that pain away for the rest of Jiyong’s life. He had wanted the responsibility of taking care of Jiyong ever since then, and now that he was twenty-two he realized that he had been pushing the boy ever since he had seen him two days ago.

Love forced was not really love, Seunghyun realized. He had to step back and let Jiyong come to him, and that might mean that he would never make those steps. Jiyong just might be straight, and just happened to want to feel good in Seunghyun’s arms those too few times that they had been together. Seunghyun was going to have to guard himself against whatever Jiyong did, because anything he saw at this point would hurt, knowing that he wanted more than Jiyong was ready to give.

Sure enough, he found Jiyong in a corner stall in the barn with Dara. They were making out, laying there in fresh straw, surrounded by the smells of animals and cobwebs, and when Jiyong realized that Seunghyun was there he looked up with a perfect smile on his face, as if seeing Seunghyun had made him the happiest man on the planet. 

“I’m going to go wait in the car,” Seunghyun said softly, not looking at Dara when her head whirled around to stare at him. 

“You could join us,” Jiyong laughed. “Dara doesn’t mind, do you, Dara?”

Before the girl could answer, Seunghyun repeated softly, “I’m going to wait in the car,” and he turned around and left. As soon as he was out of sight of the barn, he sank to his haunches, holding his right hand over where his heart used to be, gasping for breath for at least a small eternity. 

When he could breathe again, he continued walking back to the car, and opened the car up so that he could sit in the driver’s seat. He leaned his head back against the headrest and fought against tears. Had he actually thought that Jiyong would want him outside of the Kwon Garage? Jiyong would marry a girl with the same social standing that he had, and Seunghyun would live in New Orleans, taking pictures of magazine models and putting together advertisements, just like he had planned before last night. 

What was it his roommate said, “All boys are whores, and the gay boys are simply gay whores?” That sounded about right. 

He heard a knock on his passenger side window, but he was more surprised to see Bom standing on the outside. “Can I come in?” she asked through the glass.

Seunghyun reached over and unlocked the door, smiling as she slid in the car. She wore a handkerchief shirt and a skirt that was almost too short to actually be called anything but a belt, coordinated with bejeweled flipflops. Seunghyun appreciated the miles of naked legs that she displayed, almost the same color as the tan leather seats in the Charger.

“Hey sweetie,” Bom said, smiling fit to beat the band. She reached over to hug him, pressing her breast into his chest. Seunghyun was almost tempted to cop a feel, but he restrained himself. 

“It’s been a long time,” Seunghyun acknowledged. 

“I’d like to welcome you back, if you’re up to it,” Bom waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “I’m thinking, dinner and some red wine, maybe a hotel room, you and me and lots of nakedness…”

“I’m leaving in five days, Bom,” Seunghyun said, his voice low.

“That makes it all the more reason to do our welcome back and goodbye party sooner,” Bom said, propping her feet up on the dash and giving Seunghyun a tantalizing glimpse of her thong panties. They were turquoise. 

Seunghyun swallowed. “It’s not a good time,” he said, fingering the leather steering wheel. 

“Did Jiyong finally give it up to you, then?” she asked, looking disappointed. She exhaled, her breath smelling like oranges.

“What?” 

“Oh come on, we were together for how long? Almost a year? I saw how you were around him, how he was around you. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that math out. You don’t want me ‘cause Jiyong has finally given you some sort of sign that he’ll take it from you.”

“Bom…” Seunghyun started to say, but was interrupted when Jiyong and Dara climbed into the back seat of the car. 

“Hey Dara,” Jiyong leaned over the front seat to greet the other girl with a brief kiss, Seunghyun winced at the quick flash of Jiyong’s tongue against Dara’s mouth. “Hey, let’s go out to the Forest, I’ve got something that I think we’ll all like.” 

Seunghyun pulled the servant mask back on as he obeyed his father’s employer. He didn’t know how else to hide the hurt the younger man kept doling out to him. It took them almost twenty minutes to get to a parking lot in the middle of the national park, and even though it was a Saturday night they didn’t have a lot of competition. The temperature nearing one hundred degrees might have had something to do with it.

Jiyong passed out tiny pieces of paper to all of them, instructing them to place the bits of fiber on their tongue. It wasn’t the first time the four of them had tripped together, but it had been a long time. Jiyong kept placing more paper on their tongues periodically, eventually doing away with placing it there with his fingers and kissing them to get it into their mouths.

The girls seemed especially happy to watch the boys kissing each other, but it was driving Seunghyun mad every time Jiyong pulled away from him to kiss one or the other of the girls. Seunghyun knew that the drugs had kicked in when Jiyong’s entire head had been encompassed by purple rainbows sparkling, and Seunghyun thought rather disgustedly that the effect was ruined for him by a movie about sparkling vampires. He got out of the car when Bom climbed over the backseat to cuddle with Jiyong and Dara, flashing her wet turquoise thong at him and looking over her shoulder as if she expected him to join them. Seunghyun mentioned that he was simply going for a walk. He couldn’t watch Jiyong with the girls, couldn’t stand watching anyone else touching him. He was all of five feet away from the car when the back door opened, and Jiyong got out into the night air with him. 

“Aren’t the girls going to miss you, Ji?” Seunghyun asked the love of his life.

“Mmm,” Jiyong replied. “I doubt they’ll notice I’m gone. They’re currently wrapped around each other, and if they aren’t fucking now they will be soon.”

“You want to leave those poor girls alone without the convenience of your dick?” Seunghyun said, staring up at the starry sky.

“My dick wants something else,” Jiyong said, grabbing Seunghyun’s wrist and dragging him towards the trees. He threw the taller man against one of them, and started kissing him, lightly tugging on his hair, ripping the tee-shirt off of his body. “It should be illegal for you to wear clothing.”

Seunghyun was too busy kissing those lips for him to understand anything that was being said to him at that point. The sounds were becoming fractured anyway, and there was nothing that was going to put it back together beyond this man’s mouth and tongue, which was currently making trails down his chest and stomach.

“God, you have the perfect cock,” Jiyong said with his hand down Seunghyun’s pants. Seunghyun gasped for breath, taking in the muggy air to his lungs, his mouth open and his eyes wide as Jiyong pulled his member out of his pants and slowly slid his lips over and around it. Seunghyun briefly thought that Jiyong’s lips looked like a girl’s pussy, and he almost came at that thought alone, but he wanted to drag this experience out forever. He had waited for this forever, and he was grateful that the light of the moon was letting him see everything that the man on his knees was doing for him. 

It was more than obvious that Jiyong had never done this before, Seunghyun thought as Jiyong’s teeth scraped lightly against the rim of his glans. The pain that it brought was perfect, and Seunghyun wondered if Jiyong could hear him moaning. He grabbed the tree behind him for support and concentrated on not thrusting into his lover’s mouth, trying not to choke the man who seemed to be doing nothing now but teasing him. He briefly wondered if the palms of his hands were melting into the tree, and fantasized that he was the tree, and Jiyong was actually going down on nature herself, a pagan offering, a human paying tribute to an ancient goddess. 

“Jiyong,” Seunghyun whispered reverently, feeling light headed when Jiyong tongued him, his saliva coating Seunghyun’s penis in liquid sin. The light from the stars above seemed to have found an invisible prism and fell around them in rainbows off set by bright red fireworks that were detonating, and it took Seunghyun a minute to realize that he had actually closed his eyes before he looked back down at the sensual magician on his knees before him and immediately came in Jiyong’s mouth. Jiyong licked Seunghyun clean, and then buried his face in the thatch that surrounded his penis, one of the kindest things Seunghyun had ever seen Jiyong do. 

Seunghyun pulled Jiyong up to his feet, and wrapped his arms around the man. He slowly kissed his lips, moaning at the taste of himself on the other man’s tongue. “My heart,” Seunghyun whispered. “The things you do to my heart, how am I supposed to survive you?”

“I love it when you fall apart like that, and I get to put you back together like my own personal jigsaw puzzle,” Jiyong whispered against his lips. 

“I want you, again,” Seunghyun said. “I want to be inside of you. Not tonight, but soon.”

Jiyong whimpered a little. “Why not tonight?”

“You aren’t ready. I don’t have anything to make it good for you. I don’t want to take you while we’re tripping. A million other reasons, but mostly because I need you to know that I’m not simply fucking you, Jiyong. I want us to make love,” Seunghyun referred back to the conversation they had at the lake almost five years ago.

Jiyong’s eyes filled with unshed tears, but Seunghyun kissed them away. The drugs made him think that he was removing crystals from his lover’s face, but his mind knew that they were simply droplets of salt water. 

They walked back to the car together, Seunghyun missing his shirt but otherwise undamaged. They both got in the front seat while the girls were still enjoying each other in the back. They sat backwards in the front seat and watched them for a while, while Jiyong whispered into Seunghyun’s ear how the girls in the back were turning him on, but simply sitting next to him was making him crazy. Seunghyun smiled softly and pulled the other man into his lap, and leaned Jiyong’s back up against his front, stroking his little dragon’s cock slowly while they watched Dara and Bom lazily fucking each other with lips and tongues and fingers. Jiyong laid there in a boneless heap, enjoying Seunghyun’s occasional kiss on his throat and ear, the feel of Seunghyun’s erection between the cheeks of his ass, and the sight in front of him until he came in slow, driving pulses all over Seunghyun’s hand. 

Seunghyun was the first to sober up enough to drive everyone home, and he carried the girls up to their houses and waited for Dara’s roommate to come get her at the front door and Bom’s brother to pull her inside the house. Jiyong was out in the front seat, and Seunghyun smiled at his sleeping face occasionally while he drove them home. He carried him princess style up to his own room in the Choi apartment, and they settled in on the narrow bed, where Seunghyun quickly shut his eyes and met the Sandman.


	5. Chapter 5

Seunghyun woke up to the feel of someone in his room that shouldn’t be there. He tightened his hold around Jiyong in case it was the ghost, and opened his eyes to find his dad staring down at the two boys.

“Dad?” Seunghyun asked, confused as to why the shorter man was in his room.

“Jiyong is such a good looking child, don’t you think? So smart and talented,” Mr. Choi mumbled, the smell of alcohol coming off of his skin in strong wafts. 

Seunghyun had to hold his breath to get close to his old man, and he climbed over a sleeping Jiyong to get to him. “C’mon dad, it’s…” a quick glance at the digital clock on his headboard gave him the time, “it’s five o’clock in the morning. Time for you to get some sleep,” Seunghyun pushed the hair on his head back out of his eyes and took his dad’s arm, leading him to his own bedroom.

“I have to change the oil on Mr. Kwon’s Jaguar today, Seunghyun, and then detail it. I can’t go to bed,” Mr. Choi said, trying to go past Seunghyun to get to the garage.

“I’ll handle it, dad. Don’t you worry; I’ve got in under control.”

“I really did love your mom, Seunghyun. She was such a special woman, she could create beauty out of dirt,” Mr. Choi mumbled into his pillow. “I think that I wasn’t good enough for her.”

“Dad, it’s okay. I love you, now go to sleep,” Seunghyun took his dad’s shoes off and placed his glasses on the nightstand. He pulled the covers up around his dad’s chin and kissed the sleeping man, staring at the man's hands as he fell asleep. He wondered where his dad got such horrible scars on his hands, because he didn't think being a mechanic could account for all of them. He stumbled into the kitchen and poured a glass of water and got two Tylenol, and placed them next to his dad’s nightstand for when the man woke up. 

The sound of his bedroom door slamming and Jiyong screaming had Seunghyun running across the tiny apartment to his room. The doorknob was frozen cold, and his breath came out of his mouth in arctic puffs, fogging the air around him. He kicked the door open to get to Jiyong, whose eyes were wide open as he cowered under the covers of Seunghyun’s bed and whimpered, staring at something that Seunghyun couldn’t see. 

Seunghyun grabbed salt off of the kitchen table and started throwing it wherever Jiyong’s line of sight was directed, and then he got into bed with his lover and gathered him to his chest. “Is she still here?” 

Jiyong was crying, clinging to the older man with his eyes tightly shut. “Where were you? Don’t leave me, don’t ever leave me…” 

“Shh… I’m here now. I’m here, baby…” Seunghyun continued to murmur comforting words to the younger man, kissing the top of his head and holding him tightly. He rubbed Jiyong’s back in circles as the younger man’s body relaxed against his own, and the temperature in the room slowly warmed back up. 

“She’s gone now,” Jiyong looked up at Seunghyun with a sheepish grin. 

“What was she doing?” Seunghyun whispered at him.

“She was straddling me, and her face was right in mine. She was so cold that it hurt, Hyunnie,” Jiyong buried his nose in the taller man’s shoulder. “She’s so angry, and she wants me to do something about it, but I don’t know what I should do or even what she’s angry about.”

“Maybe we should find out,” Seunghyun said. “Maybe the priest can tell us what she’s thinking, or what she wants.”

“Mmm,” Jiyong snuggled deeper into Seunghyun’s chest. He pulled the covers up around them more snugly, and smiled. “You’re here. I don’t need anything else.”

“Jiyong, I don’t think that ignoring her is going to make her go away. I think that she’s trying to hurt you,” Seunghyun said. He pulled the man up his body to make eye contact with him, but all he ended up doing was turning himself on as Jiyong sprawled himself on top of him. He tried to ignore the reaction his body inevitably had, having a man as gorgeous as Jiyong was plastered to his chest and staring into his eyes with a glint of mischief in his expression, and he opened his mouth to say something else to drive the point home, but Jiyong kissed him then. 

“Maybe the ghost is just jealous that you want to fuck me,” Jiyong said between kisses.

“Dude, if that’s my mom, you’re a sick fuck,” Seunghyun said, rolling over on top of him. 

“I’m always jealous of anyone that you want to fuck,” Jiyong said. “You remember I told you I was watching you and Bom in the garage when I was fifteen?”

Seunghyun stared at Jiyong. “Yeah…”

“I was hiding in that old Model T that dad had just bought, and her legs were wrapped around your neck, and I could see you sliding in and out of her. I was so pissed that you weren’t wearing a condom, but she kept coming so hard all over you I could see where you were wet. I had to stick my hand in my pocket and beat myself off watching you fuck her, Seunghyun. I wanted to be her so much it hurt my chest, but I was so turned on watching you that I wanted you to see me that way, too. That’s why, last night, in the barn and two nights before that, in the backseat… but it didn’t turn you on, did it?”

“God, Ji,” Seunghyun said, burying his face in the pillow next to his lover. He inhaled the scent of lemons, the same detergent that his mother used all the time. “I don’t even know what to say to you.”

“Tell me you love me,” Jiyong whispered, touching his face, “Tell me that I’m not feeling this alone.”

“So dramatic, Ji,” Seunghyun whispered, and then kissed him again. “There’s no one else in the world for me, Jiyong Kwon. I don’t want anyone else. It didn’t turn me on to watch you with those girls, it killed me knowing they were touching what I want to be mine and mine alone. I was burning with jealousy, you prick, and you thought you were turning me on,” Seunghyun kissed him again, a mad kiss with more teeth than tongue or lips. 

Jiyong took it and turned into something more, something soft and beautiful. Birds were singing outside the window, the wind was blowing through the Magnolia tree, the scent of roses, lavender, hyacinth and honeysuckle from Seunghyun’s mother’s garden blew in the window. 

Seunghyun pulled away, and climbed out of bed. “I hate to do this now, but do you think the ghost is coming back?” 

“No, usually she only scares the shit out of me once a night. What are you doing?” Jiyong asked as Seunghyun was putting on clothing. 

“I have to do some work for my dad. He’s not feeling well,” Seunghyun said, tying his black hair into a short ponytail on top of his head. 

Jiyong pouted under the covers, and Seunghyun kissed the little pout off his lips. “I’ll come wake you when the priest gets here, okay? You sleep, and I’ll be up to check on you periodically, all right?”

Jiyong lay back down, “I’m going to masturbate while you’re gone,” he threatened.

Seunghyun’s eyes got darker. The thought of this man masturbating in his bed was such a turn on for him that he almost forgot about his promise to his father. “Evil piece of shit,” Seunghyun said, leaning down and kissing the man once again. “I love the thought of you getting off in my bed.”

“Just think, you could be getting off in me,” Jiyong’s dirty mouth whispered before he kissed Seunghyun again. 

Seunghyun sighed, and then practically ran out of the room, afraid that if he stayed longer he would take the man up on his offer.

Jiyong stretched out over the bed, grasping his dick in his right hand, pumping lazy strokes. Seunghyun was going to have to smell him for the rest of his stay, and if things went according to plan, Jiyong wouldn’t be sleeping alone the rest of the week.

Seunghyun took twenty-five minutes to change the oil in the Jaguar, but it took forever to detail that stupid car. There were so many little gadgets and gizmos, and he had to make a Wal-Mart run to pick up more Armor-All, and then he got stuck in line with a buddy from high school for twenty minutes catching up on his kids and divorce, and then driving back he got pulled over by a cop who had thought that, because of the way the seatbelts worked in a Monte Carlo, he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and then he got a ticket because he didn’t have his proof of insurance on him, and finally by the time that was taken care of Church traffic let out. 

Church traffic in the South wasn’t quite like traffic anywhere else on the planet. It was slow, there was singing, and there were so many cars on the road it made it impossible for a person to actually drive. Seunghyun cussed the old people driving in front of him, the teenagers driving beside him, and the road which didn’t have another lane. The priest was supposed to show up at the Kwon Mansion in less than an hour and he had to finish detailing that car, wake Jiyong up, and clean up himself… which he could foresee being a problem with Jiyong, who would probably try and help him out. 

That thought made him cuss the old people again, who apparently thought it was perfectly acceptable to stop in the middle of the road for no damn reason and… and then Seunghyun saw the smoke coming out from under the hood of their car. So Seunghyun started cursing himself, because he knew he had to go fix their car on top of everything else. 

The sun beat down on him while the old man stood next to him, staring at the opened hood. “I think you ran out of anti-freeze,” Seunghyun said. “I’ve got a gallon of water in my car…”

“You Vietnamese?” the old man asked, staring at him with pale blue eyes.

“No sir, I’m an American,” Seunghyun said respectfully.

“I went to Vietnam courtesy of Uncle Sam. They spit on me when I came back and called me a baby killer. I just cooked food for soldiers, though,” the man said, looking back at his engine.

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” Seunghyun went back to his car to pull out the water. He poured it into the radiator, “make sure you get your mechanic to fill that with anti-freeze when you get the chance,” Seunghyun said.

“You’re Korean, then?” the man asked him, ignoring his instructions.

“My parents were, but they changed citizenship in the ‘80s, sir,” Seunghyun said. “I was born here.”

“I knew a Korean gal once, real pretty girl. She used to bring my wife flowers.”

Seunghyun looked up at the man. “My mom grew flowers,” he said slowly.

“Her name was Rose Choi. She your mama?”

“Yes, sir. How did you meet her?” 

“She was in the hospital, giving birth to you, probably, at the same time as my daughter. She had that tall guy with her, looks a lot like you. He was always bringing her things, and they loved you a lot. I remember that, ‘cause she shared a room with my daughter and I thought it was weird ‘cause the man who was there looked like such a rich fellow. Anyway, she brought my Martha flowers after our daughter died. Seems like she hasn’t done that for a while, now.”

“My mother passed away recently. Fell down the stairs,” Seunghyun said faintly.

“Well, how weird is it that you’re that baby, and you pull over to help me with my car? Good to meet you again, Baby Choi.”

“You too, Mr…” Seunghyun waited for the man to answer.

“George. Philip George. My wife is Martha George,” Mr. George pulled out a business card and handed it to Seunghyun. “You ever want to come see me or Martha, we’d welcome you. Your mama was a right fine lady.”

“Thank you, sir,” Seunghyun said, putting the card away in his pocket. He watched the man pull away from the side of the road. He leaned up against the car, thinking about what the man had said. Seunghyun didn’t look like his father. Seunghyun’s father was short. He never would have looked like he had money. 

He took a deep breath, because oxygen made the brain work faster, but he was immediately reminded that he stank, he needed to shower, and that he had a priest coming to his house in less than twenty minutes. He hopped back in the car, thankful that he was driving the sport edition of the Monte Carlo, and raced back to the Kwon Mansion. 

He stuck his head in his bedroom to wake Jiyong up, and then jumped in the shower for a five minute clean-up. Jiyong shuffled into the shower with him and tried to distract him, and while it was tempting, Seunghyun didn’t want to be caught in flagrante with a man in front of a Catholic priest, even if that priest happened to be his friend from high school.

Seunghyun and Jiyong didn’t take long in the shower at all, even though Jiyong pouted because it was the first time in years he had gotten to see Seunghyun completely naked. 

“Tonight,” Seunghyun promised him, “Tonight I’ll make it up to you.” He pushed that little voice in his head that was replaying the conversation with Philip George back down. If what he said was true, Mr. Kwon was his father. If Mr. Kwon was his father, then Jiyong was his brother. Would that matter? Incest would be forbidden if there was a possibility for children, but since that was impossible for two males, would fucking his brother even matter? Was Jiyong his brother?

After they had dressed and dried off from the shower, Jiyong was catching on that there was something in Seunghyun’s head that wasn’t him. It worried him, and he started analyzing what could have happened in the short hours from five in the morning until now that would have changed the way Seunghyun felt about him. As he had been asleep the entire time, he began to wonder if Seunghyun didn’t like him because he thought that he was lazy. He chewed on his lower lip, staring at the ground.

“I’m not lazy,” Jiyong held Seunghyun’s wrist as he started down the stairs. “I’m not lazy, Seunghyun, I just sleep a lot…”

“Wait, what?” Seunghyun asked, confused. Lazy? Where had that come from.

“I know that you’re mad at me, and I don’t want you to be because it hurts. Whatever I did, I’m sorry. If it’s because I sleep too much…”

Seunghyun’s mind had to work in overtime at this point. What in the world was Jiyong thinking about. “You’re being silly,” Seunghyun said, assuming that would end the argument and they could go meet the priest.

“No, not if you’re mad at me. I don’t know why you’re so distant all of a sudden…” 

Seunghyun realized that Jiyong was concerned about him not paying 100% attention during their time together. It wasn’t that much to ask, considering that they only had four and a half days together before they were separated again for an indefinite period of time, and he knew that it wasn’t fair that he was distant without discussing the reason with Jiyong. “Oh baby,” Seunghyun breathed into the air. He held Jiyong’s face in his hands and tilted it up, kissing those lips he loved so much slowly and tenderly. “I’m sorry honey, my mind went somewhere else. Let’s get you taken care of so we don’t have to have sex for an audience of my dead mother’s ghost tonight, okay? Because I am going to make love to you, I just don’t want my mom to watch me doing it.”

Jiyong smiled at him, his mood buoyant and happy with those simple words. 

There was a man standing at the edge of the garage in a simple suit. Jiyong seemed surprised that he wasn’t wearing robes or carrying a huge Bible or candles or anything. 

“Brother Gabriel,” Seunghyun embraced the man, who hugged him back with a soft smile on his face. 

“Seunghyun, it’s been a long time,” the man said in a cotton candy voice, low and melty. 

“Jiyong, this is my old friend Youngbae, but his name is changed to Gabriel now because of some Catholic thing…” 

“We take the name of someone we aspire to be like,” Brother Gabriel said. His physical presence was comforting, Jiyong noticed, as if he were attuned to something larger than just this realm of existence.

Jiyong led them into the kitchen at the main house, and there they sat around the kitchen table while Jiyong poured the coffee. 

“Tell me about this ghost,” Brother Gabriel asked.

He didn’t need to, because as soon as the request was out of his mouth, all of the doors in the house slammed at once, there was the sound of a woman screaming from the upstairs bedroom, a radio turned on to static somewhere in a room near to the kitchen, and all of the cereal boxes were dumped out of the kitchen cabinets, their contents scattered on the floor.

“Well,” Brother Gabriel said, “It appears you have a poltergeist.”


	6. Chapter 6

Seunghyun finished nailing the steel nails in the doorways of the house. He had already gone through and anointed all of the windows and doorways with holy water with Brother Gabriel, and sprinkled salt throughout the doorways on the floors, but he wasn’t sure if his Jiyong was protected from the ghost of his mother. “Oh Mom,” he whispered into the darkness, “please rest and leave my lover alone.”

Mr. Kwon walked up behind him holding a plastic bottle of sweet tea, surveying the nails that he had pounded into the doorway. “Jiyong is seeing ghosts again?”

“You know Jiyong sees ghosts? I thought that he wouldn’t have told you,” Seunghyun took the opportunity to surreptitiously study the man’s features, searching for a resemblance to himself. He was secretly horrified that he could find similarities so easily. Had he been completely blind his entire life?

“I knew he did as a child, or at least he thought that he did. I pounded some nails into the doorway of his bedroom and sprinkled salt and splashed holy water there. It seemed to calm him down,” Mr. Kwon said, “Apparently my mother’s spirit used to attack him there.” Seunghyun immediately knew why his mother’s spirit would only stare at him in that room, then. He handed the bottle of sweet tea to Seunghyun, who took a deep pull of the sweet liquid inside. Mr. Kwon continued, “I’m really impressed with how far you’ve been going to take care of Jiyong. I knew you loved him when you were kids, and it warms my heart to see that you two are willing to take care of each other like this.”

Seunghyun smiled and kicked at the dirt a little, “I feel like I should offer you a dowry or something.”

Mr. Kwon laughed, his elegant features transforming to a little boy’s for just a moment, “No Seunghyun, you deserve to be a part of my family. I’m glad that you two have been honest with your feelings for each other. I was afraid that after the incident with my wife you would have been scared off.”

Seunghyun stared at the older man, trying to figure out of he was saying something on two different levels, but social niceties dictated how he responded. “Thank you, sir.”

Seunghyun went to work on the last doorway in the house that he didn’t get. He wasn’t exactly sure that it was necessary to do the closets, but he didn’t want to take chances. He opened the doorway, and was immediately sure it was necessary, as the tiny space was freezing. He pulled a nail out of his jeans pocket and positioned it at the lintel, but before he could pound it in a box fell from the top shelf, scattering paper and pictures all over the floor. 

Seunghyun crouched to clean it up, but paused when he saw that it was his birth certificate.

There was a blank on line that listed his father.

There were other documents too, his adoption by Edward Choi almost a year after his birth, Edward Choi’s immigration papers only a month after he was born, pictures of his mother and Edward Choi’s quick wedding at the Justice of the Peace… It was definite; Edward Choi was not his father. 

Seunghyun quickly stacked the papers back in the box, pausing to glance at a single photo of his mother and Mr. Kwon, staring longingly at each other. “Is this why, mom? Why you can’t leave Jiyong alone? I love him; can’t you please be kinder to him?”

He placed the box back on the top shelf, and then pounded the nails up into the lintel. 

He found his lover and his friend in Jiyong’s bedroom, with Jiyong staring as Brother Gabriel anointed the windows with holy water and said some prayers in Latin.

“Why does the Church hate homosexuals so much?” Jiyong was asking Brother Gabriel. Seunghyun wanted to close his eyes in embarrassment, but he also wanted to run and wrap his arms around Jiyong so that whatever answer Brother Gabriel gave him couldn’t hurt him.

“We don’t hate homosexuals,” Brother Gabriel explained. “Former Cardinal Lozano y Barragan stated that despite homosexuality being a sin, every homosexual was still a human being and therefore worthy of respect and love. Hatred and fear are sins, and in the opinion of many of my brethren, they are sins far more dangerous and insidious because they can be hidden. Besides which, homosexuality is made illegal in the book of Deuteronomy, a 3,000 year old law code that also outlaws playing with pigskin. You might say that the Catholic Church should hate football players as much as homosexuals.”

Jiyong happily chatted with Brother Gabriel, but Seunghyun wasn’t listening to their words anymore. He was trying to figure out why his mother was terrorizing Jiyong, and he had learned the first step to fixing a problem was to find out what the root cause of it was.

Rose Choi had been sixteen years old when she had given birth to Seunghyun. Mr. Kwon had been twenty-six and married to Bora Kwon for five years. Bora had problems conceiving, Seunghyun knew, but that wouldn’t be a reason for his mother to be terrorizing Jiyong.

Unless scaring his lover wasn’t for the reason of they shared the same father. Maybe she only came after him because he could see her and no one else could. But then why would she have taken the place of Jiyong’s grandmother?

But maybe she didn’t. Maybe Mr. Kwon’s mother haunted Jiyong for another reason, and Seunghyun’s mom was haunting him because of the whole father issue. What reason could possibly exist for a grandmother to terrify her own grandson like that? 

Unless… Seunghyun stared at Jiyong. The two of them looked nothing alike, there was no way they could be brothers. Maybe Jiyong wasn’t his brother after all, because maybe Mr. Kwon wasn’t his father. Jiyong looked a lot like his mother, but he was the same height and had the same lips as… Mr. Choi? Was that the reason that Mr. Kwon’s mother was haunting Jiyong? Because Jiyong wasn’t her actual grandchild?

Was that enough reason for Seunghyun’s mother to haunt him, though? If Justice was the goal she was serving, wouldn’t Seunghyun becoming Jiyong’s lover be reason enough for her to lay off? It wasn’t like Mr. Kwon was protesting the union, so why would his mother keep trying to scare the shit out of his lover? 

His musings were interrupted by the blaring sound of a car’s horn from outside. Inwardly, he groaned when the horn played Dixie, and he knew that only one person on the planet would think that it was funny to get that tune installed and be audacious enough to come play it in the front yard of the Kwon mansion.

“Dongwook,” Seunghyun grumbled, leaving Jiyong and Brother Gabriel debating the topic of homosexuality and the Church while he went down the stairs of the mansion. 

Dongwook Choi, no relation to any of the people related to the Kwon mansion, had been his roommate in college, whose philosophy on life had greatly influenced such renowned celebrities as the bum on the street, the cashier lady at the Stop-and-Go, and once, the janitorial staff at the university (who didn’t mind being bribed with alcohol) while Dongwook practiced his dissertation on The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth about Morality and What to Do About It*. 

Seunghyun stared at the Volvo parked in his driveway, and prepared for his brain to melt out his ear as soon as Dongwook stepped outside the grey vehicle. The man was brilliant, Seunghyun had no doubts about that, but sometimes that brilliance came with flashes of being completely retarded.

“Seunghyun!” Dongwook yelled across the driveway. “Look at the fancy house you got here.” He took his sunglasses off, grateful that the one hundred degree heat was a cool break from the warmth of Atlanta.

“This is where I work, dumbass,” Seunghyun said with a huge smile on his face. “What are you doing here?” 

“Passing through. I’m on my way to New Orleans to go on a vampire hunt,” Dongwook walked up to his old roommate and gave the man a back-breaking hug. 

Seunghyun rolled his eyes. Dongwook might be brilliant, but he was completely obsessed with folklore. It was something that Dongwook and Jiyong could bond over. The thought worried Seunghyun, as Dongwook was also gorgeous. He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to leave this man alone with his lover all of a sudden. 

Mr. Kwon had stepped out on the porch. “Hello,” he greeted Dongwook.

Seunghyun made formal introductions, “Mr. Kwon, this is Dongwook Choi. Dongwook, this is my family’s employer, Mr. Hyunbin Kwon.”

“Sir,” Dongwook returned the greeting, “I’m Seunghyun’s friend from Georgia State. We were roommates…”

“Ah yes,” Mr. Kwon shook Dongwook’s hand, “I remember hearing about you. Please, come in, get out of the hot.” 

Seunghyun and Mr. Kwon were sitting at the kitchen table with Dongwook by the time Jiyong and Brother Gabriel came down the stairs. Jiyong studied the attractive man at the table and instantly sat down next to him. “Who are you?”

Seunghyun was surprised that the look in Jiyong’s eyes wasn’t speculative but suspicious. It planted a warm feeling in his chest, and he leaned back to see how Dongwook was going to respond to this.

“I’m Seunghyun’s roommate from college, Dongwook Choi. You must be Jiyong Kwon,” Dongwook said with a smile. The man Seunghyun was in love with was gorgeous, and he knew how to dress, unlike his friend Seunghyun. Maybe Jiyong would fix that little problem he had, and burn all of Seunghyun’s sleepwear.

“You lived with Seunghyun the past four years?” Jiyong said, a little dismayed. He stared at the pouty lips on Dongwook, down the man’s obviously muscular body, and then back up to the expensive haircut framing an almost perfect face.

Dongwook, who knew everything there was possibly to know about Seunghyun, was delighted to see that Jiyong was jealous. “Four very short years,” Dongwook sighed, dragging out the torture a little bit. “It was hard to watch him move out, so I’m here to see if he wants to keep being roommates in New Orleans…”

“He already said that he’s going to be roommates with his best friend, DaeSung,” Jiyong said with a bit of anger in his tone. “You’ll have to find someone else to be roommates with.”

Dongwook laughed, but glanced slightly over at Mr. Kwon to see how he was reacting to the situation. Whatever he saw on the man’s face made him a little more speculative, and he glanced over at Seunghyun to see how he was reacting. “I figured it would just take a little more time to make Seunghyun mine, after trying for four years you’d think the boy would at least take a little pity on me, but no, St. Seunghyun won’t touch anyone on campus. I can’t tell you how many girls and pretty boys I’ve thrown at him; he wouldn’t touch a single one of them. I could have almost sworn that he was in love with someone from his hometown. It made him into such a romantic figure with all the girls, stories on campus about him pining away for…”

“Dongwook, you can shut up now, you bastard…” Seunghyun growled at the older man. Jiyong didn’t need to know this, now that Seunghyun knew that he had been cutting a swathe through all the co-eds in Memphis while he had been gone. Jiyong might feel guilty, and Seunghyun didn’t want that.

“Why? You haven’t told Jiyong? After you told me how close of a friendship you two had, I thought that he would know who you were in love with…”

Seunghyun threw a coaster at his friend’s head. It was all that he could do at that point, and the table was going to take more than a few seconds to get around so that he could choke that bastard.

Jiyong was staring at Seunghyun in shocked surprise. But nothing surprised him more when Seunghyun got up from the table and physically grabbed Dongwook, who was howling with laughter, and dragged him outside the back kitchen door. His Seunghyun, his gentle friend, was beating up his college roommate in the backyard, and his friend couldn’t stop laughing long enough to defend himself. It wasn't the fist fight that he had seen Seunghyun get into of course, he had fought more than his fair share in high school. It was the first time he had seen him get violent with someone he said he was friends with.

Jiyong instantly felt guilty at how much he had taken from the older boy. Seunghyun had been forced to graduate early from high school so Jiyong’s mother could make him leave. He lived away from his parents when he was still basically a child, missed his mother’s funeral because he couldn’t afford to come home, hadn’t had sex since the last time Jiyong had seen him with Bom almost five years ago, and all of it was Jiyong’s fault. 

Mr. Kwon and Brother Gabriel were watching the boys fight in the backyard, discussing what needed to be done in order to keep the house safe for Jiyong against the ghost. By the time Seunghyun and Dongwook came back into the house, Seunghyun was the first to notice that Jiyong was crying.

“What happened?” he demanded, walking over to Jiyong and embracing the smaller man. “Why are you crying? Don’t cry, baby, I’m here, I’ll take care of it.”

“You gave it all up for me,” Jiyong said, tears and snot running down his face, “You sacrificed everything for me…”

“Shh…” Seunghyun said, holding him in his lap and rocking him back and forth. “I sacrificed nothing. I gave it all willingly for you, I would do anything for you, and it’s not a sacrifice because you are worth everything to me. Stop crying baby, I love you and your tears rip my heart up.” Seunghyun’s distress seemed an appropriate counter to the sudden turn the weather was taking outside, gentle rain fell with the rumble of thunder comforting Jiyong. 

Mr. Kwon had to wipe a tear away at that, and Dongwook was pleased to see that Jiyong wasn’t quite the little prick that he had suspected him of being. Brother Gabriel took the opportunity to say good-bye to Mr. Kwon, who made a generous donation to the Church, and the three men went outside on the covered porch to give the lovers some privacy.

After Brother Gabriel left, Mr. Kwon invited Dongwook to stay with them for the evening in one of the extra bedrooms. Dongwook accepted, and when they went back in the kitchen Dongwook regretted it because Mrs. Kwon was screeching.

“I’ve told you a million times, Seunghyun, stop touching my son! He doesn’t need your nasty perversion tainting him. He was such a good boy until you started trying to make him into a homosexual!”

“Bora!” Mr. Kwon said, “That’s enough.”

“You!” Mrs. Kwon glared at her husband, and continued screeching at him.

The words weren’t important to Seunghyun at that point, and neither was Mrs. Kwon’s anger. He tenderly put Jiyong down on the chair they were sharing, and then walked over to the sink and dampened a kitchen towel. He returned to Jiyong and wiped the tears and snot from his lover’s face, gently patting Jiyong’s eyes, swollen from crying. 

Mrs. Kwon continued yelling, and Dongwook looked uncomfortable, but he sat at the kitchen table next to his friend and his friend’s lover. Seunghyun had been a good friend to him in college, and it was the least he could do to withstand his lover’s mother in order to pay him back a little bit. 

Her anger had the force of a tidal wave, and they were simply tiny boats on a vast ocean in comparison. Seunghyun was starting to understand that it was out of desperation. She couldn’t get pregnant with Mr. Kwon, for whatever reason, and then she had to watch the little teenage gardener carrying her husband’s child. Seunghyun suspected she seduced the teenager’s husband for revenge, but then was shocked when she herself got pregnant with Jiyong, and kept the child on a pedestal in order to hold her head high. Seunghyun wasn’t angry at Mrs. Kwon anymore because he felt sorry for her. 

Mr. Kwon had finally had enough, though. He walked out of the kitchen, and to the immense relief of the boys, his wife followed him. 

“That was pleasant,” Jiyong said, in the most sarcastic manner he could muster. He shrugged off the incident, used to having his parents screaming at each other for most of his life. “Tell me more about why Seunghyun didn’t touch anyone at all on campus,” he looked at Dongwook speculatively.

“Ji,” Seunghyun protested, dropping his head into the puddle of his arms on the table instead of making eye contact with anyone. “This is embarrassing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Author’s note: I totally stole this title from http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/Greene-Dissertation.pdf, author Joshua Greene.)


	7. Chapter 7

Seunghyun tried not to turn red again while he was brushing his teeth in Jiyong’s bathroom, but the man’s eyes on his back was quite a test to his self-control. He concentrated on hitting the wisdom teeth in the back of his mouth that he hadn’t had pulled yet, but it was too late. His face was red. “Stop,” he said without turning around.

“What?” Jiyong asked, rolling on his bed.

“Stop staring at me, you prick.” Seunghyun said, finally turning around. He tried to glare at Jiyong, he really did, but it was hard to pull off a successful glare when his face was red.

“You really waited for me that entire time?” Jiyong asked, genuinely curious and if truth be told, touched that this man would do that for him. He felt his heart fluttering at the thought that this man had thought enough of him to wait.

Seunghyun met his eyes in the mirror. He sighed, and then spit his toothpaste in the sink, rinsing it down the drain. “Once you told me that you wanted me, I was done. I don’t want anyone else, and everyone before you was just to keep me company until you realized we were made for each other. When you acknowledged that you loved me, I was done. All I had to do was wait until I could find a way to spend time with you. It isn’t that big of a deal.”

“You had sex with all those girls when you were in high school…” Jiyong tried to protest, but he winced. He knew he was trying to justify himself being a whore.

“Not really. Bom and Dara. I kissed a few other girls, but that’s it.” Seunghyun leaned against the doorframe, watching Jiyong with hooded eyes. 

Jiyong instantly felt like a prick. He had majorly whored around, bitter that his Seunghyun wasn’t there, taking The Period of Exile out on his mother. The only person he had hurt was Seunghyun, though. “I’m so sorry,” Jiyong whimpered.

Seunghyun was instantly at his side, with his arms around him. “Shh… it’s okay honey. You dealt with your pain in your own way. I love you no matter what. Do you understand that?”

Jiyong staring up at him with pain-filled eyes was too much after the day that they had together, the previous days and months and years of waiting for each other, and Seunghyun closed his eyes and kissed Jiyong with all of his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind. 

Jiyong felt his clothing being carefully pulled away from his body, and then Seunghyun’s hands touching his skin, his palms warm against his chest. Jiyong gasped as his shirt was stripped off, the temperature change instantly pebbling his small nipples. Seunghyun took the opportunity to lick them into diamond tips, biting and pinching gently until he pressed Jiyong back onto the bed and returned to his mouth as he stretched out on top of him lazily.

Jiyong dug his fingers through Seunghyun’s long black hair, pulling it back from his aristocratic face, enjoying the sight of his lover turned on because of him. Seunghyun slowly opened his eyes to look deep into Jiyong’s, and Jiyong felt his heart being thrown into those eyes, and he smiled as he watched it disappear into the black depths. “I love you, Seunghyun. I want you to be with me forever.” 

Seunghyun smiled, kissing the tip of Jiyong’s nose. “Anything you wish,” he promised, and he kissed Jiyong as if it were for the first time. In a sense, it was, because they both knew how much they loved each other at this point, and their bodies were ready to surrender to each other.

Jiyong pulled Seunghyun’s shirt off, kissing his neck and collarbone, his hand drifting over the exposed skin as he tried to take in as much sensation as he could. Seunghyun slid his hand down the back of Jiyong’s sleeping pants, cupping Jiyong’s cheeks and squeezing, pulling his lower body up against his own so that they ground against each other.

Jiyong gasped at the feel of Seunghyun’s erection pulsing against his own. His head fell back and he moaned, which Seunghyun took as an invitation to kiss his neck, and he dragged one of his hands across Jiyong’s hip, circled the jutting hipbone twice, and then buried his fingers in Jiyong’s pubic hair, circling his erection and giving him one long, luscious pump. 

Jiyong’s hips followed, graceful like a dancer’s. “God, I want you inside of me,” he gasped. Seunghyun gave him a smirk, and then kissed his way down Jiyong’s chest again, this time licking everything that he could find. He pulled Jiyong’s pants off and spread Jiyong’s legs open wide. He didn’t tease him at all, just engulfed his penis with his mouth and gently sucked on him, pumping him in and out of his mouth at such a slow tempo that Jiyong worried that he would lose his mind. 

He was surprised at how easily Seunghyun slipped a finger into the outer ring of his passage, but the cool liquid feeling told him that he had coated his finger in some sort of gel. Seunghyun fingered his asshole all around, and Jiyong felt himself relaxing until his finger was all the way up, and he added another one with very little pressure. Jiyong glanced up to see Seunghyun, and was turned on by the way that his hips were grinding against the sheets, an effort to assuage his own lust while he prepared Jiyong. It turned him on so much that Seunghyun was able to insert a third finger and Jiyong didn’t even notice.

It was raining hard outside, the wind and the rain making a symphony of sound that seemed to be made just for Jiyong and Seunghyun. Of course, that was when the ghost started slamming one of the attic doors and screaming at the top of her lungs. Seunghyun valiantly tried to ignore her, but it wasn’t even a full minute before he rested his head on Jiyong’s hip and screamed, “Mom, I’m trying to get laid here!”

Jiyong laughed in frustration and acceptance. They put their clothing back on, and Seunghyun washed his hands quickly in the bathroom before they went out into the hall.

Dongwook was already out there, standing in the hall, staring at the staircase in utter fascination. “It’s a real ghost,” he said, sounding more excited than any human had a right to be. He was holding a camera, and ready to run up the stairs towards the ghost given the slightest bit of prompting.

Seunghyun pulled on his own hair lightly before sighing. “C’mon Dongwook, let’s go.”

Jiyong and Seunghyun followed Dongwook up the stairs, albeit a little more slowly and nervous than the folklore fanatic. Jiyong was still scared of the ghost, and Seunghyun wasn’t in too much of a hurry to see the spirit of his dead mother throwing a fit up in the attic.

Two flights of stairs later, the three boys stared at a file box opened and thrown around. Jiyong was holding onto Seunghyun, staring with wide eyes at the mess, and then burying his face into his boyfriend’s chest. 

“Is she there?” Seunghyun whispered.

“She’s sitting in the middle of the floor, and it looks like she’s crying,” Jiyong whispered, terrified. “There’s blood everywhere…”

“Didn’t you say your mom fell down the stairs?” Dongwook asked. He was taking pictures of the scene, occasionally snapping photos of Seunghyun and Jiyong. 

Seunghyun flipped off his friend when he took one picture of his boyfriend too many. “Yeah, she fell down the stairs, why?” 

“Large amounts of blood around a ghost are usually indicative of a murder, but falling down the stairs isn’t murder,” Dongwook murmured out loud.

“Not unless you’re pushed,” Jiyong said into Seunghyun’s chest, unable to look at the ghost at all. He was shaking, and Seunghyun held him closer in order to give him some comfort. He briefly wondered if that was even possible, but then he couldn’t see ghosts so he didn’t know how frightening it was. 

“Why would anyone want to kill my mom…” Seunghyun trailed off. He could think of a few people that might want to kill his mother. Mr. Kwon, if she threatened to take the secret of his birth public. Mrs. Kwon, if she found out that Seunghyun was Mr. Kwon’s child, or if she thought that Jiyong was in trouble. Seunghyun’s dad, if his mom and Mr. Kwon were still carrying on. The possibilities were endless. That wasn’t exactly a comforting feeling.

Dongwook looked up at him, concerned that he knew something, but Seunghyun didn’t make eye contact. “What are all these papers?” he tried to change the subject by figuring out what the ghost had dumped all over the floor.

Seunghyun looked around, “These are all hospital records,” he said, a little shocked.

“They’re from a year ago,” Dongwook said, staring at the papers he was holding. “Seunghyun, your mom was pregnant, did you know that?”

Seunghyun’s head snapped up, “What?” 

Jiyong smiled, “Well, that would have been a good thing, wouldn’t have it? Your mom always did talk about how she wanted more children than just us two, didn’t she?” 

Seunghyun’s first thought was, ‘Who was the father?’ He couldn’t just ask that out loud, though. 

“She’s stopped,” Jiyong whispered, letting go of Seunghyun. “I don’t see her anymore,” he continued. He walked around the attic, and he picked up a sonogram that was laying on the floor. “Look Seunghyun, your baby brother or sister,” he said, smiling at the picture. “I would have loved to meet him or her.”

Seunghyun and Dongwook crowded around, and Seunghyun quickly read on the bottom, Baby Choi. He would have had a brother or sister. The thunderstorm outside the house distracted him, and then that thought was nowhere near as consuming as the completely selfish thought that next passed through his mind.

“The ghost is gone, right?” Seunghyun asked Jiyong with a deeply pensive look on his face.

“Yes,” Jiyong answered simply, trying to figure out what his next line of logic was.

“You don’t think she’ll be back again tonight, do you?” Seunghyun asked his second question.

“She usually only comes once a night,” Jiyong answered carefully.

“Right. Dongwook, you can find your way back to your room, right?” Seunghyun asked his last question.

“Yeah, no problem,” Dongwook said, still taking pictures of the attic room.

“Good. Goodnight,” Seunghyun said, and then grabbed Jiyong’s hand and pulled him back to his room.

“Seunghyun, what…” Jiyong couldn’t say anything else as Seunghyun’s mouth was assaulting his own, drinking deep from his lips, and his hands were all over Jiyong’s body, pressing and pulling, stroking and caressing. Jiyong’s clothing was a distant memory, and Seunghyun walked him over to the bed. 

“I’m so sorry,” Seunghyun whispered, “I can’t wait anymore.” 

Jiyong simply kissed him in response, willing to do whatever this man needed from him. Seunghyun’s hands were wrapped in his hair, and Jiyong gloried in the rapture of his returned kisses, Jiyong’s hands fluttering down Seunghyun’s back, kneading his glutes, pulling his clothing off of his slightly sweaty body. Jiyong loved the way that Seunghyun smelled when he was this aroused, like musk and man. The smell hit the back of his throat, and Jiyong wanted this man inside of him desperately, wanted to be possessed by him with a fierceness. “Make love to me,” he whispered, begging.

Seunghyun shed his clothing quick, and his hands were back below Jiyong’s waist. There was no fellatio this time, but he had somehow covered his fingers in that gel again, and worked his long fingers into Jiyong again, this time with a little pain. It wasn’t bad, and it faded quickly when Seunghyun touched a part inside of him that seemed to sing.

Jiyong was making little kitten noises, and it was driving Seunghyun mad. He captured the man’s lips with his own, and then he placed his tip at the entrance of Jiyong. He pushed slowly, knowing that he was much larger than the three fingers he had pressed into that rosette, “Push out a little, baby,” he murmured, and then sighed in relief as he started sinking into Jiyong’s tight hole. It was hot, and the gel eased the glide into a pleasant dreaming sensation. 

Jiyong felt like he was completed with Seunghyun inside of him. He was a large man, and he burned like fire going in, but when he pulled out it was a dark emotion, combined with Seunghyun’s stomach pressed against his own erection. Jiyong gasped as Seunghyun surged back inside of him, Jiyong’s voice crying out softly, begging for more.

Seunghyun had never felt more perfect, making love to this man was better than breathing, better than any sex he had ever had before. When Jiyong wrapped his legs around his waist, and his arms around his neck, Seunghyun stared in wonder as tears fell out of his eyes. He stopped moving, “Am I hurting you, baby?” 

“Oh God please don’t stop,” Jiyong begged, “You are so perfect. I could write poetry to your… God like that… poetry to your cock,” Jiyong finished between pants. 

Seunghyun smiled, hearing words that pleased him, and he kissed his lover again, and smiled when Jiyong rolled him over on the bed, riding him. Seunghyun almost came when he saw Jiyong moving on top of him, his hips rolling in a perfect rhythm, his own cock standing proud and alert, glistening with moisture. Seunghyun reached up and stroked it, rubbing the moisture in at the head and stroking the stick. 

Seunghyun’s hand was large and warm, and it fascinated Jiyong how it almost covered his entire dick. Seunghyun’s other hand reached up to tweak his nipples, causing Jiyong to arch his back and grind his hips harder, forcing Seunghyun’s dick further up inside of him. 

“Jiyong,” Seunghyun whispered. “I love you. More than life itself, I love you,” he whispered, sitting up to hold the smaller man by the waist, grabbing his hips and pulling them onto him, kissing those lips that he had spent hours dreaming about. 

When Jiyong came, it was in frantic, rolling bursts, and it set off Seunghyun’s ecstasy inside of him. Jiyong slid up and down his boyfriend’s cock twice more, reveling in the feel of his sticky liquid inside of him before he eased off, falling beside his boyfriend. He tried to catch his breath, and he kissed the sweat off of Seunghyun’s chest. 

Seunghyun hummed a little tune, sounding almost like the thunder outside their window, which Jiyong found incredibly sexy in his deep, hypnotic voice. Seunghyun opened one of his eyes to see Jiyong smiling down at him, and he smiled back. “We need a shower, we’re dirty now.”

“I want to sleep smelling like you, and dripping you everywhere,” Jiyong protested, pouting.

“That’s for when we don’t have ready access to a shower, my heart. Now, come on, I want to soap you up,” Seunghyun said, carrying him to the bathroom.

The shower poured hot water down on top of them, and the soap mostly got used for cleaning each other’s skin. Jiyong closed his eyes and smiled while Seunghyun massaged shampoo into his hair, and did his best to distract the taller man while he was shampooing his own hair by testing how clean he was below his waist with his lips and tongue. His distraction worked, as Seunghyun almost forgot to rinse the soap out of his hair, and Jiyong was inordinately proud of himself. 

Seunghyun carried his boyfriend back to their bed and crawled in after him, kissing his face and his lips, the skin over his eyes, his eyebrows and his forehead. Jiyong felt so loved that he almost started crying again, but he fell asleep to the sound of Seunghyun’s heart, pounding strongly under his ear, like it was in rhythm with the rain. It was the most comforting lullaby he had ever heard, and he never wanted to sleep again without it.


	8. Chapter 8

The paint spilled off his brush in the early morning sunlight, streaming through the windows of the small apartment over the garage. Golds and roses and mustards and sepias, browns and blacks and undertones of sage, the colors created a picture that couldn’t quite capture Jiyong’s beauty the way Seunghyun kept seeing in his head. He glared at the oils on his palette, wishing that they could tell him what he was doing wrong with them, but they weren’t speaking. 

Jiyong found his lover this way, glaring at the canvas sitting on his easel in the kitchen, a drop cloth covering the worn linoleum. Seunghyun flexed his bare toes on the worn sheet, his heel and ankles covered by the jeans that outlined long legs and a firm, high butt. Much to Jiyong’s delight, the lanky man hadn’t bothered to don a shirt, and smears of paint decorated his chest and body, reminding him of the people who had lived on this land 300 years before. If Jiyong could add a few feathers to this man’s hair, he could have passed as a Native. A hot, sexy Native, no doubt; Jiyong briefly wondered how his old friend felt about role-playing.

He walked up behind him, reveling in the knowledge that Seunghyun had no idea that he was there. He slid his arms around his boyfriend’s waist, feeling the man’s muscles tense in his arms and then relax, exhaling a sigh of contentment. Seunghyun turned in the other’s arms, and his paint stained fingers slid under Jiyong’s jaw, kissing those lips with a quick firm press of his mouth. “Lover,” he breathed, “how long have you been here?”

“Only a few minutes,” Jiyong said, keeping his eyes closed in hopes of another kiss. His wish was granted, and he stretched up against the taller man’s body, their mouths a lazy exploration of tongue and lips. He sighed in happiness and then leaned back to observe how his kisses had made Seunghyun’s lips slightly swollen and appealingly wet. 

“Did you need something?” Seunghyun asked.

“I wanted to talk about the ghost,” Jiyong said, stepping out of Seunghyun’s embrace and pulling a chair out. He straddled it backwards, and tried not to preen when Seunghyun’s eyes darkened slightly. He wore a pair of khaki shorts and a white tank top with red Converse shoes, a simple outfit but it looked good on him. 

“Mmm…” Seunghyun murmured. “Sometimes, Jiyong, we should let sleeping dogs lie.” He turned back to the painting and dabbed a little more highlight on Jiyong’s cheek using a fan brush.

“You think that you should let your mother’s murderer go?” Jiyong asked, incredulous that this man would let his mother’s murderer go unpunished.

“Finding the murderer is only going to hurt you, so I don’t want to do it. There’s too much history to worry about, and I want you to stay happy,” Seunghyun said, 

Jiyong sat still for half of a minute, and then blurted out, “You know. You know who did it.”

“No, actually I don’t. I understand the motivation, but as to who really did it, I have no idea,” Seunghyun said, still not facing his boyfriend.

“Tell me,” Jiyong stated, staring at the man hard.

“You don’t want to know,” Seunghyun stated, putting down his palette, capping off his tubes of pigment and immediately rinsing his brushes in turpentine, and then rolling them in a small plastic cup of cat litter. 

“Tell me now,” Jiyong insisted.

Seunghyun sighed. “Saturday I found a file box in the closet in the Morning Room,” he said, still not making eye contact with Ji. “It was paperwork about how my dad came to America the month after I was born and adopted me. Also, it doesn’t list who my birth father is,” Seunghyun said. He finally glanced over at Jiyong, who looked like he was thinking hard. 

“So your dad isn’t your dad,” Jiyong said.

“Correct,” Seunghyun said, trying to see if Jiyong would come to the same conclusion that he had.

“Your mom has worked at this house since she was little and her dad was gardener,” Jiyong said.

“Correct,” Seunghyun repeated. 

Jiyong looked at Seunghyun this time, and possibly for the very first time really studied him. “You’re my dad’s son,” Jiyong whispered, shocked. “You’re my brother.”

“No,” Seunghyun said. “I mean, yes, I am your dad’s son, but no, I am not your brother.” 

“What? How?” Jiyong asked, confused. It didn’t take him as long as Seunghyun thought it might, “Oh God, your dad is my dad. Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I’ve only known two days…” Seunghyun started to explain.

“You wanted to fuck me so bad that you didn’t want me distracted by this information,” Jiyong accused hotly, feeling hurt and betrayed.

“Well… I wanted to make love to you, yes, but I hadn’t ever planned on telling you…” Seunghyun tried to explain, but his mouth couldn’t come up with all the words that seemed to be fighting in his mind.

“I can’t believe you would keep information like that from me. How am I supposed to trust you in the future if I don’t know if you’ve got information that will change my life at any given moment?” 

Seunghyun stuttered a little at this point, frustrated at his inability to fight back with Jiyong as quickly. “That wasn’t what I was trying to do. I only wanted to protect…”

“That isn’t protecting me, Seunghyun, that’s not treating me like an adult. I’m not a child who needs to be coddled…”

“I didn’t want you hurt…” Seunghyun tried to explain, but Jiyong’s mind was working in overdrive and it made it impossible for Seunghyun to catch up verbally. It felt like he was watching a train wreck in slow motion, and he couldn’t run fast enough to get the damsel in distress off of the tracks before two trains crashed into her.

“I can’t believe that I thought I could trust you. Who are you, anyway? Four years and you don’t e-mail, call, text, nothing. You waltz back in here expecting to sweep me off my feet by your mere presence. You are so full of yourself. Why in the world did I think that you would treat me as an equal? Do you know what, Seunghyun? Screw you. I thought you were special, but I don’t need another parent. I’ve already got too many as it is.”

Before Seunghyun could move, Jiyong was gone. Out of his kitchen, out of his apartment, out of his life. 

Seunghyun sunk into the chair that Jiyong had just vacated, and quickly came to a decision. He was done with this. He couldn’t keep up with Jiyong, and it was time for him to go. He could stay in a cheap hotel room in New Orleans until his apartment was ready, or maybe Dongwook would let him stay with him while that weirdo went on his vampire hunt. He had to get out of Memphis, to get away from Jiyong, to run from Mr. Kwon who was probably his father, to stop taking care of Mr. Choi who probably wasn’t his father, to run from his mother’s ghost. There was too much here, and he didn’t want to be in such chaos. That was for someone else.

He packed his bags, which wasn’t hard because he hadn’t really unpacked them from when he had arrived Thursday afternoon. He called Dongwook on his cell phone, waking the man up in the house across the driveway. “You ready to go, man?”

“What? I mean, I can be, why? Am I getting kicked out?”

“Jiyong wants me gone. I’ve a mind to give him what he wants,” Seunghyun said.

Dongwook was quiet for a minute, and then he said, “Yeah, why don’t you start carrying your bags to my car? We’ll be out of here in thirty minutes.”

“Sounds like a plan. See you in thirty,” Seunghyun hung up the phone. He carried out his bags and file boxes, stacking them neatly by Dongwook’s old car. Out of habit, he checked the engine, and made notes about oil and gas levels, and quickly refilled some windshield wiper fluid with a special anti-bug formula. 

Mr. Kwon stepped outside, shielding his eyes from the sun. “It looks like you’re taking off,” he observed.

“It’s time for me to go,” Seunghyun agreed. 

“I really wish you would stay. I talked to a friend over at Southern Cities magazine downtown, they said they could use a photographer like you,” Mr. Kwon pulled out a silver cigarette case and carefully removed a black cigarette.

“Thank you, sir, but I’m good enough that I don’t need blessed in,” Seunghyun said. “Tomorrow is a good magazine, and it will get me national recognition.”

“Sometimes, we don’t make decisions for fame and glory. Sometimes we make decisions for family,” Mr. Kwon said, holding a Zippo lighter up to the black cigarette. There was a small sound of paper crackling and the scent of cloves filling the air.

Seunghyun relaxed a little. The smell was comforting because it was familiar. “Sir, there is so much drama in this house right now I don’t want to be here. Jiyong… Jiyong doesn’t want me here.”

Mr. Kwon sighed, and then looked towards his house. “You’ve never had a grown-up fight before, Seunghyun?”

“Sir?” 

“When you’re grown up, lots of times things get said or done that nobody meant to do in the first place. Feelings get hurt, and grown-ups work out of self-preservation. Words get said that should have never been thought in order to protect ourselves from what we can see as danger. Sometimes, you should wait until feelings calm down in order to figure out what’s really going on. Jiyong reacts to things without thinking; he’s always been this way. He can think fast, respond faster. You take your time coming to a conclusion; you never say a word you don’t mean. Even if that means that you sit on secrets that hurt yourself, you don’t make a move unless you are positively sure that it is in everyone’s best interest that words get said. Jiyong doesn’t work this way. I can guarantee that if you wait for two more hours, you’ll find that Jiyong comes back to you.”

“I made a mistake, Mr. Kwon. I didn’t move fast enough for Jiyong. He needs someone who is quick like he is…”

“No, of that I am thoroughly convinced you are wrong. You steady him. He inspires you. You two are a perfect match, even if you don’t have too much in common.” 

Seunghyun paused, holding his trunk, but ready to put it in the back hatch of Dongwook’s car. 

“I would pack up, just to get Jiyong hurrying along in his thinking a little,” Mr. Kwon said, blowing perfect smoke rings towards the ground.

Seunghyun smiled at the man who was his biological father. He thought for a minute, and then said, “Sir, can I ask you a question?”

“Yes,” Mr. Kwon looked up, and by the look on his face Seunghyun thought that the question that he was going to ask and the one Mr. Kwon was expecting was two different questions. Despite that, Seunghyun knew the question needed to be asked, and by asking it he would acknowledge that he knew all the secrets that their parents had tried to keep hidden from him and Jiyong. 

“Who was the father of the baby my mother was pregnant with when she died?” Seunghyun asked quietly, as if lowering his voice was going to make the question easier for Mr. Kwon to hear.

“Rose was pregnant?” Mr. Kwon asked. “You know…” he caught on a second later. “I knew this day would come, but I didn’t want it to. You must know…” Mr. Kwon paused and looked up at the house, “You must know that I loved your mother very much.”

“I know you had sex with a sixteen year old girl when you were ten years older than she was. I know you had been married for five years at that point. I know that your wife had an affair afterwards,” Seunghyun said. “None of these things look good on you, sir. I just want to know who the father of my younger brother or sister was. I’m not concerned with anything else.”

“I don’t know, Seunghyun. It could have been me. There is a possibility. It might have been the man you grew up calling father. How long have you known?”

“Two days now. That’s all. I suspected when I was in Georgia and you kept sending me money. I couldn’t figure out why you would do that when I supposedly seduced your son. I’m more upset that you didn’t send me money to get me home to see my mother buried.”

Mr. Kwon nodded. “I was out of my mind, son…”

“You don’t get to call me that. You can still call me Seunghyun, but you don’t get to call me son, sir,” Seunghyun finished putting the trunk in the back hatch, and closed the door. “I know that my mother was sixteen and in your employ. I know that when she died, you couldn’t even remember me and I am your own biological son. This doesn’t scream love to me, this is blind, stinking obsession. This is sickness. While what you said about Ji and I earlier might be true, the decisions you made about my mother don’t endear you to me at all.”

Mr. Kwon nodded his head. “I know. I know that I did wrong by your mama, and I make no excuses for it. I should never have touched her. I apologized to her, and she accepted my apology. I will apologize to you, for making your life harder than it had to be. I didn’t know what to do with you, how to act around you. Your mom made most of the decisions, and one of those was arranging for your father to come from South Korea to marry her and give you your own family. That was not something that I did. I hated seeing her with him, but she was not going to damage my marriage to Jiyong’s mother…”

“Your marriage with Mrs. Kwon is one of the most damaged relationships I have ever seen, with the exception perhaps of my mother’s relationship with my dad. I don’t know what reaction you’re trying to get from me, or if you want forgiveness or what, but you’re going to have to give me time to process this information,” Seunghyun said.

“Stay with Jiyong, Seunghyun. He’s so unstable without you, wild and destructive. Do this for him, not for me. I can’t stand to watch either one of you apart from each other. I made a mistake in letting Bora send you away, I can’t stand to watch her son repeat her mistake,” Mr. Kwon said, changing the subject and dropping the rest of his cigarette to the ground and putting the cherry out with his heel.

Seunghyun leaned against his friend’s car and studied the sky as if searching for an answer. There was so much conflict here today, and he didn’t want to deal with it. He wanted Jiyong to be there so that he could hold him while his mind turned over the new information that he had received. He was pretty certain that Mr. Kwon hadn’t killed his mother. The man was obsessed with her and that generally didn’t end well, but he looked Seunghyun in the eyes and didn’t try to convince him that he hadn’t done something wrong by seducing a young girl. He also tried to talk Seunghyun into staying for Jiyong’s sake, not his own. Unless he was entirely sociopathic, those were not the combined actions of a murderer. 

Dongwook came out of the house at that point, carrying his backpack and holding his keys. He was walking incredibly slowly towards the car, stopping to study the gardenia bush by the back door, smelling the flowers and then slowly touching them.

Seunghyun couldn’t figure out what was taking him so long, and then Jiyong came out of the house running. He flung himself into Seunghyun’s arms, tears streaking down his face, sobbing uncontrollably. “Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me. I don’t want to be without you again, I don’t care how many times we argue.”

Jiyong’s arms were holding Seunghyun so tightly that Seunghyun was having problems breathing, but he didn’t care. He hugged the smaller man back, kissing the top of his head. “How in the world could I leave you? You’re too pretty,” he smirked, smoothing the man’s hair back from his forehead. 

The loud sound of gun shot filled the air, causing Seunghyun to pull Jiyong down to the ground. He covered the smaller man’s body with his own and looked around.

“I told you to quit trying to seduce my son,” Mrs. Kwon’s voice came from the direction of the house. “You’re going to send him to Hell with you, and I won’t stand for it. I won’t let you seduce my son like your mother seduced my husband. Your evilness runs in your blood, and I’m not going to let it continue.” She raised the shotgun one more time, and Seunghyun’s entire body tensed up with the click-clack sound. Seunghyun covered Jiyong the best he could, grateful that the smaller man wasn’t struggling. He put his head down and kissed his lover, and tensed when the second boom exploded around him. 

He opened one eye, noticing that he didn’t feel like he had been shot. He raised his head to look around, startled to see Mrs. Kwon laying on the ground with the shotgun slightly out of her reach. Her sightless eyes stared at the sky.

“You ain’t killing my boys,” Mr. Choi said from the garage, stumbling drunk, holding a 9 mm handgun, smoking from the barrel. 

“Dad?” Seunghyun asked. He was shocked that his father just killed Mrs. Kwon, and then he realized that the ground around him was wet. He looked down and immediately panicked, seeing a puddle of blood spreading in the dirt below Jiyong’s body. “Jiyong?” he croaked, “Jiyong, baby? Talk to me baby, are you okay? Jiyong?”

Jiyong’s eyes were closed, and he was still breathing shallowly. 

“Call 911!” Seunghyun screamed, his voice cracking. “Don’t die, baby, you can’t leave me!”


	9. Chapter 9

The funeral was attended by many people, friends and co-workers and curious onlookers, white lilies gracing the cars of the mourners. In old Southern tradition, cars pulled over on both sides of the road in somber respect, letting the funeral procession pass in eerie silence. 

Seunghyun drove the car behind the limousine, Dongwook in the passenger seat beside him and his father nursing a bottle of Jack Daniels in the seat behind him. The entire mood was somber, but Seunghyun was controlling his emotions. He hadn’t cried once.

“So, we’re staying in Memphis?” Dongwook asked him, staring out the window at the half-submerged forests that they drove by.

“For now. Thanks for staying with us, we really appreciate it,” Seunghyun said.

“I can always find something to do, something to get into trouble with,” Dongwook bragged with a cocky grin, trying to lift the mood.

The Hearst, two cars in front of them, pulled into the cemetery. When they got out of the car, Seunghyun looked on in complete bewilderment as hundreds of cars pulled into the cemetery behind them. He turned around and walked to the limousine, helping Mr. Kwon out of one side, and then walking to the other to help Jiyong out the other. He pulled Jiyong’s crutch out first, and then lifted the smaller man with one of his arms. “You okay, baby?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Jiyong smiled tenderly up at his lover, “I’m okay as long as you’re beside me.”

Mrs. Kwon's death was attended by so many Memphians because, not only was she a prominent figure of the community, but many wanted to know why she died. Southerners just could not get enough of the gossip and speculation that was running rampant in the newspapers, all of whom were having a heyday with pictures and articles. Local celebrities were present: Morgan Freeman, Justin Timberlake (who's mother was their neighbor), Three6Mafia, and even the city's very own Prince Mongo. 

Mr. Choi stood with Mr. Kwon, surveying the scene in front of them. The casket had been taken to the grave site, and the two men walked towards it silently together. Both of them had loved this woman for a time in their lives, and they struggled to remember the good along with the bad. 

She was no doubt one of the finest legal minds that Memphis had seen in a long time. The new mayor stood at her site, his white hair like tiny puffy clouds on his black skin. Judges and Congressmen stood, watching, and the law firm of Kwon, Kwon, Jackson and Brisentine had sent large bouquets of roses to the site. Seunghyun stood next to his lover, who shouldn’t have been out of the hospital at all, as he leaned heavily on his crutch. Seunghyun wasn’t about to let him miss his mother’s funeral, and he kept a careful eye on him in order to make sure that he wasn’t overexerting himself.

They threw dirt on the coffin, and everyone had something nice to say. No one was going to speak badly at a funeral. Seunghyun smirked a little, half of the people here would dearly love for someone to speak badly at the funeral, and the other half would dearly love if the speaking badly ended in a fist fight.

So the audience watched the little tragedy with bated breath, and after the last words were spoken, they left disappointed. 

The ride back to the Kwon mansion had them piled in the car Seunghyun was driving. There was a comfortable silence among the men, an unspoken agreement to just mourn in silence. Mr. Choi regularly sipped at his bottle of Jack, Mr. Kwon stared out the window, Dongwook wrote things in a notebook he was carrying around, and Jiyong leaned slightly off balance under the influence of some heavy pain medication. Seunghyun watched his family out of the corner of his eye, making sure that they were all handling it.

Pulling into the Kwon driveway was almost like a wonderland, and Seunghyun almost rolled to a stop. Every single flowering plant was in full bloom, shades of purple and blue and green rioted amongst the reds and oranges and yellows, pinks and turquoises settled down near the ground, vines climbed up trellises to plop purple clouds high above their heads, and the smell was almost too strong to breathe. 

“We did the right thing,” Mr. Choi slurred. “Rosie is saying we did the right thing.”

Seunghyun parked the car in front of the garage. Mr. Choi and Mr. Kwon walked to the kitchen entrance of the house together, as they needed to have a conversation about the future. Dongwook watched Seunghyun carry Jiyong, princess style, out of the car. It hurt the oldest boy’s heart to see the tenderness on his face as Seunghyun looked at his lover, and it made him think that maybe it was time for him to look for his own lover. He wondered briefly if it would be male or female, but then he decided that he didn’t care as long as they looked at him the way Seunghyun and Jiyong looked at each other.

Bom and Dara had been in the kitchen, preparing food for the very male family. It was traditional Korean food, which was a welcome comfort during the funeral, and it was well prepared. Dongwook stared at the girls in speculation, and they smiled and flirted with him while they served the other men their food. 

Jiyong eventually was feeling too groggy to stay in a sitting position, and his leg was hurting again, so Seunghyun carried him up the stairs. He gave him a quick shower, being careful to avoid the bandages on his lower back and upper thigh, and then carried him to the bed where he tucked them in.

“I hate being this helpless,” Jiyong whined. 

Seunghyun smirked at his lover, “I kind of like you being this helpless.”

Jiyong made a face at him, which Seunghyun promptly leaned over to kiss the disgruntled look off of his face. 

“You would be so much more convincing if you wouldn’t look so cute while you were complaining at me,” he stroked his lover’s cheek, looking down at the man.

Jiyong smiled up at Seunghyun, content in his boyfriend’s presence. He sighed, snuggling into the feather pillows and thin cotton sheets, and Seunghyun smoothed the ivory knit comforter more securely under his chin. The drugs made his eyes heavy and his mind fuzzy. “You’ll be here when I wake up?”

“Of course, my little dragon. I can’t leave you alone now, you’ll destroy something,” Seunghyun said, brushing Jiyong’s hair back from his forehead. “Go to sleep, I’ll protect you.”

Jiyong gave up the fight with nary a whimper, and he greeted the Sandman with a smile on his face. Seunghyun watched his lover sleep, and then left to go take care of his fathers downstairs. Bom and Dara had left with promises to come back with Dongwook later. 

Seunghyun took the rocking chair on the front porch between his fathers, and they were silent for a few minutes. Mr. Choi poured him a glass of whiskey, and they drank together. 

“We loved your mother,” Mr. Kwon said, sipping on Glenlivet, a fancy Scotch that Mr. Choi and Seunghyun had secretly made fun of as hoity toity before that night. 

“We loved her,” Mr. Choi agreed, pouring himself another glass.

“I think that it wasn’t easy on Mrs. Kwon,” Mr. Kwon said. “I loved her, too, but in a different way.”

“I didn’t love her,” Mr. Choi said.

Seunghyun tried not to laugh at his dad, but only succeeded in snorting whiskey up his nose. It was painful. 

Mr. Kwon handed him a napkin, and they continued to stare at the flowers that Seunghyun’s mom had gifted them with. “You want me to call that magazine, seeing as how you’re staying?”

“That’d be a help,” Seunghyun said, trying to decide if the pollen from all of the flowers had settled in a layer on his whiskey. He shrugged and sipped it anyway. 

“You’d better take care of my… son…” Mr. Choi scratched his head. “My other son. Our son. Damn, people are going to think that we’re gay if we call both of you our sons. And that you’re incestuous. And gay.”

“Who cares?” Mr. Kwon asked. “It’s the twenty-first century. That Dougie Howser kid is gay. And so is that George Takai. We can have gay sons together, and its no one’s business if we’re gay or not.”

“I ain’t gay,” Mr. Choi stated. 

“Yeah, me neither. We’ll be heterosexual dads. It’ll be good for when we get grandkids, so they can see both sides,” Mr. Kwon said.

“I don’t want grandkids for another couple of years though, son. You two need to establish yourselves, and Jiyong needs to finish university. I don’t want you two to be like those other kids without jobs and shit,” Mr. Choi said, pouring himself another glass. 

Seunghyun wasn’t really listening. “I need to install a ceiling fan on this front porch if we’re going to sit here like this a lot,” he said.

“That’d be nice,” Mr. Kwon agreed.

“And another thing,” Mr. Choi said, not listening to his son or his recently affirmed heterosexual life partner and father of his children, “That Dongwook kid better be paying rent or something if he’s going to live here, too. This is not going to become a charity house, and I ain’t driving his ass around, either.”

“Who are the new gardeners?” Seunghyun asked Mr. Kwon, ignoring his dad.

“Some young boys, I’ve never met them before. Met them at Korean Baptist Church, just came over from South Korea and needed a place to stay. I gave them the old gardener’s cottage over towards the pond.”

“Do they have names? Or should I just call them gardener when I see them on the property?” Seunghyun asked, his deep voice rolling with sarcasm.

“Taemin and some kid who likes to call himself Onew. His papers say Jinki, though. Cute kids, kind of creepy with the touchy-feely.” Mr. Kwon took a sip of his Scotch and then glanced over at Seunghyun, “Not that we have a problem in this house with the touchy-feely.”

Seunghyun smirked. 

“You think all the Korean boys are gay nowadays?” Mr. Choi asked.

“I hope not, there’d go the future of all Koreans. Maybe the girls need to step up a little…” Mr. Kwon said. 

“Bom and Dara like each other,” Mr. Choi said. “If I was twenty years younger…”

Seunghyun put his half empty glass of whiskey down at that point. “That’s nice, dads. I’m going to go anywhere that is not between the two of you now, so feel free to finish your incredibly creepy conversation without me.” 

“Night boy,” Mr. Choi saluted his son with his whiskey glass. “And don’t molest my other son too much tonight, he has healin’ to do.”

“Da-ad,” Seunghyun complained, hiding his face in his hands. “There are conversations that I am just not comfortable having with you, and this would be the top of the list.”

“Like I don’t know what you’re up to. Whose son do you think you are?” Mr. Choi laughed into his glass.

Mr. Kwon smiled, too. “Remember that one time we…” 

“Okay, officially, the creepy factor has gone out the window. Good night, and don’t talk too loudly. I don’t want to hear you through the open window,” Seunghyun said, leaving the front porch with a quickness.

He spent a little time cleaning up the kitchen and piling up the Sympathy Cards in a neat stack at the kitchen desk. He would write Thank You notes later. He put away the food that neighbors had sent over, filing the recipie cards that concerned wives had written in neat hand-writing in the green aluminum container that Mrs. Kwon had left behind. When he thought that most of the things that had the possibility of going bad had been refrigerated, and a snack had been left out for his dads and Dongwook when he got home, he made his way up the stairs. 

Passing one of the empty bedrooms, he paused and looked back in the window. His mom sat in a rocking chair, her mouth moving as if she were singing a song. She looked up at him and smiled before she faded away. Seunghyun raised his hand to he were waving good-bye to his mother, and then walked back to his and Jiyong’s room.

He pulled his painting out quietly as his lover slept in the bed, and concentrated on finishing it before he woke. It was going to hang over the fireplace in their room, and he was going to paint a new one every year that they were together. 

He painted as the sun shifted its rays over Jiyong’s face, and Seunghyun had to finally put down his brush so he could stare in wonder at how many different ways nature made his lover beautiful. By the time the sun set, Jiyong stirred a little, opening his eyes to see Seunghyun staring at him.

“How long was I out?” he asked, rubbing his puffy eyes.

“A couple of hours,” Seunghyun said. “It’s about nine o’clock now.”

“Can I have some water? My mouth tastes like something used it as a toilet and then died inside of it.”

“Now that’s an image I want to carry with me the next time I kiss you,” Seunghyun said, filling a glass with water from the bathroom sink. He carried it over to the bed where Jiyong waited.

“You are going to get so sick of me, waiting on me hand and foot,” Jiyong said after he had pushed the water around inside of his mouth to get the worst of the taste gone.

“Who said I’m taking care of you by myself? Dongwook said he’ll help, and there’s our dads… and the gardeners…” he chuckled a little before sharing the story of the gardeners that their dads had shared.

“I wonder if they’re cute?” Jiyong said out loud.

Seunghyun glared at him.

“What? I’m a man. I look. I can make analytical observations. Just because something on the menu looks good doesn’t mean I’m going to order it. Why would I, when I have you to snuggle up to at home?” Jiyong asked, smirking as Seunghyun quickly sat down next to him on bed and kissed his lips. 

It had been their first real kiss since Jiyong had gotten shot, the first time they had been left alone together in days. It was a sweet exploration of lip and tongue, delicate and precious, and Seunghyun and Jiyong would have completely ignored the world falling around them if it hadn’t been for Dongwook barging in loudly with heavy footsteps. Seunghyun and Jiyong stared at each other breathless for a few seconds before Seunghyun turned around.

“Goddammit!” Seunghyun glared at his friend and roommate, “didn’t anyone ever teach you to knock?”

“Dudes!” Dongwook said, excitement lighting his features, “You will never guess what I just found out!” he held his hands out in his excitement, as if showing them what he had learned that had given him so much energy.

Seunghyun and Jiyong at this point were both glaring at their newest denizen, but they waited patiently for him to tell them.

“Memphis has werewolves!” 

They both waited in silence, waiting for Dongwook to get to the point.

“Like, real werewolves!” Dongwook jumped up and down in his excitement.

“We know,” Jiyong said. “Will you go away now?”

“How can you sit there and take this so calmly? This is history! This is science that needs researching! How is this not public knowledge? How is it possible for you to not be incredibly excited about the possibilities?” Dongwook bounced from one wall of their room to the other, his passion overflowing his body.

“Everyone knows Memphis has werewolves. Our Mayor used to be a demon until we could finally get him replaced…”

Dongwook’s eyes almost popped out of his head. He was so shocked that he didn’t notice that Seunghyun had stood up from the side of Jiyong’s bed and pushed him out of the bedroom. “We’ll talk about it later. Go away now.”

“We really need to buy locks for our doors,” Jiyong said seconds before Seunghyun sat next to him on the bed and started kissing him.

“And buy a noise machine so we can’t hear anything happening outside of our bedroom,” Seunghyun added to the conversation between kisses.

“We can steal the one that is in my mom and dad’s room,” Jiyong pushed Seunghyun’s shirt off, dragging his fingers over smooth skin, playing with the small line of hair right beneath his belly button. “Until we buy our own.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” Seunghyun agreed, and then they didn’t say anything else.


End file.
